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BITS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 By H. H., 
 
 AUTHOR OF " VERSES," " BITS OF TALK ABOUT HOME MATTERS,' 
 
 "BITS OF TALK FOR YOUNG FOLKS," "BITS OF TRAVEL 
 
 AT HOME," AND "NELLY'S SILVER MINE." 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1895. 
 
gfcC a)PY, 
 
 I8b9. 
 
 r*< 
 
 V&H»vt7fo7: 
 
 
 A063O1B99 
 
 try o( for-CV^ 
 
 40853 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 
 
 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 
 
 in thk OrBc^^h^^ii^an $y*<fflgr§f f* at Washington. 
 
 
 
 University Press: John Wilson & Son, 
 Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 — ♦ — 
 
 , . Page 
 A German Landlady 1 
 
 The Yalley of Gastein 34 
 
 The Ampezzo Pass and the House of the Star 
 
 of Gold 62 
 
 A May-Day in Albano . . " . • .82 
 
 An Afternoon in Memoriam, in Salzburg . 89 
 
 The Eeturned Veterans' Fest in Salzburg . 95 
 
 A Morning in the Etruscan Museum in the 
 
 Vatican 103 
 
 Albano Days Ill 
 
 A Sunday Morning in Venice . . . .117 
 
 The Convent of San Lazzaro, in Venice . 124 
 
 Encyclicals of a Traveller .... 131 
 
PKEFATOKY NOTE. 
 
 I AM very glad that the many friends my good 
 Fraulein has made for herself in America can 
 now see her face. 
 
 I have only recently received this picture with its 
 affectionate greeting in her delicious broken English, 
 and I make haste to share the pleasure that it has 
 given me. 
 
 H. H. 
 Newport, R. I., May 7, 1873. 
 
ILLUSTKATIOKS. 
 
 -♦- 
 
 A German Landlady .... Frontispiece. 
 Valley and Tillage of Gastein. . . Page 50 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 IT was by one of those predestinations which men 
 call lucky chances that I came to know the Fr'an- 
 lein Hahlreiner. An idle question put to a railway 
 acquaintance, and in a moment more had been spoken 
 the name which will stand in my memory forever, call- 
 ing up a picture of the best, dearest, jolliest landlady in 
 all Germany. 
 
 Up two such flights of stairs as only victims of mon- 
 archies would consent to climb we toiled to find her. 
 There was a breeze of good cheer in the first opening 
 of her door. 
 
 " Is the Fr'aulein Hahlreiner in? " 
 
 "I are she," laughed out of the broad red lips and 
 twinkled in the pretty brown eyes. The rooms were 
 just what we wanted. Who could have believed that, 
 while we were journeying sadly away from beloved 
 Tyrol, there stood waiting in the heart of Munich just 
 the beds, the sunny windows, the cheerful parlor, that 
 would fit us? The readiness of one's habitations is a 
 perpetual marvel in the traveller's life - it is strange we 
 can be so faithless about accommodations in the next 
 
 1 A 
 
2 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 world, when we are so well taken care of in this. It 
 took few words to make our bargain, and few hours 
 to move in ; in a day we were at home, and the big, 
 motherly Fraulein understood us as if she had nursed 
 us in our cradles. How her presence pervaded that 
 whole floor! There were thirteen rooms. A German 
 baron with wife and two children, to whom he whis- 
 tled and sang and shouted twelve hours a day, like a 
 giant bobolink in a meadow, had some of the rooms. 
 Two mysterious Hungarian women, who were secret 
 and stately and still, and gave dinners, lived on the 
 corner; and we had all the rest, except what was 
 kitchen, or cupboard, or the Fraulein's bedroom. 
 
 It is wonderful how soon it seems proper to have 
 kitchen opposite parlor, unknown neighbors the other 
 side of your bedroom wall, dishes washed on the hall 
 ta,ble, and charcoal and company coming in at same 
 door. When we learn to do this in New York, there 
 will be fewer deaths from breaking of bloodvessels in 
 the effort to be respectable. 
 
 No artist has ever taken a photograph of the Frau- 
 lein Hahlreiner which could be recognized. Neither 
 can I photograph her. I can say that she was five feet 
 seven inches high, and fat to the degree of fatness 
 which Rubens loved to paint ; that she was fifty-two 
 years old, and did not look as if she were more than 
 forty ; that she had hazel brown eyes, perpetually 
 laughing, a high white forehead, two dimples in her 
 left cheek which were never still, and hair, as free as 
 the dimples, too long to be called short, too short to be 
 called long, always floating back in the air as she came 
 towards you : on great occasions she had it curled by a 
 hair-dresser, — the only weakness I ever discovered in 
 the Fraulein ; but it was such a short-lived one, one 
 easily forgave it, for the curl never stayed in more than 
 two hours. I can say that, in spite of her fatness, her 
 step was elastic and light, and her hands and feet deli- 
 cately shaped ; I can say that her broken English was 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 3 
 
 the most deliriously comic and effectively eloquent lan- 
 guage I have ever heard spoken ; I can say that she 
 cooked our dinner for us at two, went shopping for or 
 with us at five, threw us into fits of laughter at eight 
 by some unexpected bit of mimicry or droll story, and 
 then tucked us up at bedtime with an affectionate 
 " Good night. Sleep well ! " But after all this is told, 
 I have told only outside truths, and given little sugges- 
 tion of the charm of atmosphere that there was about 
 our dear Fraulein and everything she did or said. 
 
 The Munich days went by too quickly, — days in the 
 Pinakothek, days in the G-lyptothek, days in the Art 
 Exposition, with its two thousand pictures. We had 
 climbed into the head of the statue of Bavaria, roamed 
 through the king's chambers at the Nymphenburg, seen 
 one hundred thousand men on the Teresina meadows, 
 and the king giving prizes for the horse-races; and 
 now the day came on which we must leave Munich 
 and each other. 
 
 My route lay to the north, — Nuremberg, Rhine, 
 Eotterdam, London. For many days I had been in 
 search of a maid to go with me as far as Rotterdam. 
 The voluble Madame Marksteller, who supports a 
 family of ten children, and keeps them all in kid gloves 
 and poodles by means of an intelligence office, swept 
 daily into my room, accompanied by applicants of all 
 degrees of unsuitability. It grew disheartening. Finally 
 I was reduced to the choice between a pretty and 
 young woman, who would go with me only on condi- 
 tion of being my bosom companion, and an ugly old 
 woman, who was a simpleton. In this crisis "I ap- 
 pealed to the Fraulein. 
 
 " Dear Fraulein, why could not you go with me 
 to Rotterdam ? " 
 
 " my dear lady, you make me go to be like fool, to 
 think of so nice journey," said she, clapping one hand 
 to her head, snapping the fingers of the other, and 
 pirouetting on her fat legs. 
 
4 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 But all sorts of lions were in the way: lodgers, 
 whose dinners must be cooked. 
 
 " I will pay the wages of a cook to take your place, 
 my Fraulein." 
 
 A country cousin was coming to make a visit ; a 
 cousin whom she had not seen for twenty-five years. 
 She might stay a week. 
 
 " Very well. I will wait till your cousin's visit is over." 
 
 " But, my lady, I fear I make stupid thing for you. 
 I knows not how to do on so great journey." 
 
 "Ha!" thought I, " I only wish I were as safe from 
 stupidities and blunderings for the rest of my life as I 
 shall be while I am in your charge, you quick-witted, 
 bright-eyed old dear! " 
 
 The country cousin, I fear, was hurried off a little 
 sooner than she liked. 
 
 " I tell she she must go. My lady cannot wait so 
 long. Six days in Munich are enough for she," said 
 the Fraulein, with a shrug of the shoulders which it 
 would have cut the country cousin to the heart to see. 
 
 On a windy noon, such as only Munich knows, we 
 set out for Nuremberg. If I had had any misgivings 
 about the Fraulein's capacity as courier, they would 
 have been set at rest in the first half-hour at the rail- 
 road station. It was evident that anything she did 
 not know she would find out by a word and a smile 
 from the nearest person : all were conciliated the min- 
 ute they looked into her ruddy face. And as for me, 
 never in my life had I felt so well presented as by the 
 affectionate tone in which she said '■ My lady." 
 
 Trusting to Murray, I had telegraphed to the Wiir- 
 temberger Hof for rooms. At nine o'clock of a dark 
 night the German crowd in the Nuremberg station 
 lifted up its voice, and said there was no Wiirtember- 
 ger Hof. 
 
 " There must be," said I, brandishing my red Mur- 
 ray, with my thumb on the spot. Crowd chuckled, 
 and said there was not. 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 5 
 
 my lady, wait you here while I go and see," said 
 the Fraulein, bundling me into a chair as if I had been 
 a baby. Presently she came back with, " My lady, 
 she do not exist these now four years, the Wiirtem- 
 berger Hof. We go to the JSTuremberger Hof, which 
 are near, and he have our telegram." 
 
 Out into the darkness we trudged,, following a small 
 boy with a glass of beer, and found, as the Fraulein 
 had said, that the JSTuremberger Hof had received our 
 telegram, and had prepared for us two of the cleanest 
 of its very dirty rooms. How well I came to know 
 my Fraulein before the end of that rainy day in Nu- 
 remberg ! 
 
 " my lady, am I to go where you go and see all ? '' 
 she exclaimed in the morning, when I told her to be 
 ready at nine to drive with me. " 0, never did I think 
 to see so much." She had evidently had in the outset 
 a fear that she would see little except at the railway 
 stations and hotels. She little knew how much pleas- 
 ure I anticipated in her companionship. 
 
 They are cruel who tell you that a day is time enough 
 to see Nuremberg. It is a place to spend two weeks 
 in ; to lounge on doorsteps, and peer into shadowy 
 places; to study old stones inch by inch, and grow 
 slowly wonted to all its sombre picturesqueness. 
 
 As we stood looking at Peter Vischer's exquisite 
 carvings on the shrine of St. Sebald's, I pointed out to 
 the Fraulein the bass-relief representing St. Sebald's 
 miracle with the icicle. She looked with cold, steady 
 eyes at the finely chiselled fire which was represented 
 curling upward from the little pile of broken icicle, and 
 then said, " Do you believe, my lady ? " 
 
 " no, Fraulein," said I ; "I can't quite believe that 
 icicles ever made so good a fire as that, even for a 
 saint. But I suppose you believe it, do you not ? " 
 
 " no, I not. The Church ask too much to believe. 
 If one would believe all, one cannot do," said she, in a 
 tone of timidity and hesitation quite unusual for her; 
 
6 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 and a moment later, still more hesitatingly, " Have you 
 read Eenan, my lady ? " 
 
 I started. Was this my German landlady, who 
 spent most of her time over her cooking-stove, asking 
 me if I read Eenan? "Yes," I said, "I have read 
 most of his books. Have you ? " 
 
 " yes, and I like so much. My confessor he say 
 he no more give me — " (here she halted : the long 
 word " absolution " was too much for her, and she made 
 a sweeping gesture of benediction to indicate it), — " he 
 no more give me — so — if I not put away that book ; 
 so I go not to him, now, two year, because I will not 
 make lie." 
 
 " But then you are excommunicated, are you not, if 
 you have not been to confession for two years? " 
 
 " Yes, I think," cheerily, quite reassured now that I 
 must be as much of a heretic as she, since I too read 
 Renan ; " but I will not make lie. I will have my 
 Renan. Then I read, too, the book against Renan ; 
 and he say St. Paul say this, and St. Peter say the 
 other, but he go not to my heart. I love the Jesu 
 Christ more by Renan as in what the Church say for 
 him." 
 
 Strange enough it was to walk through the still 
 aisles of these old churches, and, looking up at the 
 dusty stone saints, to whom incense is burned no 
 longer, hear this simple soul repeat over and over, 
 with great emphasis, " I love the Jesu Christ more 
 by Renan as in what the Church say for him." 
 
 Then we went down into the old dungeons under 
 the Rathhaus, through chilly winding galleries, into 
 stone chamber after stone chamber, rayless, airless, 
 pitiless, awful. The Fraulein grew white with hor- 
 ror. She had never believed the stories she had 
 read of torture-chambers and dungeons. 
 
 " Ach, mein G-ott! mem Gott! and this is what 
 
 might be to-day if Father had the way; and 
 
 they tell us we lose the good old times. I will 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 7 
 
 tell to all peoples I know I have seen the good old 
 times under the ground of this Niirnberg ! " 
 
 When we came out again into the open air, she 
 was so pale I feared she would be ill. She sat down 
 trembling on the stone stairs,' and drew a long 
 breath: " Ach G-ott ! but I am thanks to see once 
 more the overworld." 
 
 It was almost wicked, after this, to take her to the 
 still worse dungeons under the city walls, which are 
 literally hung and set full of instruments of torture, 
 and in the last of which is kept the famous Iron 
 Virgin. In the first chambers were milder instru- 
 ments for punishments of common offences, many of 
 which have been used in Nuremberg within seventy 
 years, — grotesque masks to be worn on the street by 
 men and women convicted of slanderous speaking (" Ha, 
 ha!" laughed the Fraulein, " there could not be made 
 enough such masks to be weared in Munich ") ; and a 
 curious oblong board with a round hole at each end, 
 into which husbands and wives who quarrelled were 
 obliged to put their heads, and live thus yoked for days 
 at a time. This pleased the Fraulein greatly. " Think 
 you, my lady, this would be good ? " she said, sticking 
 her fat fist through one of the holes, and opening and 
 shutting it, — " think you they would love theirselves 
 (each other) more ? " 
 
 But her smiles soon died away, and she was paler 
 than in the Rathhaus dungeons. This great hearty 
 woman, usually ruddy as a frost-bitten apple in De- 
 cember, and stronger than most men, grew white and 
 trembling at the first look at the horrible instruments 
 of torture with which the other chambers were filled. 
 Indeed, it was a sight hard to bear,— racks and wheels 
 and pulleys and weights and thumb-screws, helmets 
 and cradles and chairs set thick with iron spikes, and 
 at last, in the lowest dungeon of all, the Iron Virgin. 
 I held the poor Fraulein's hand. For the minute I was 
 the protector, and not she. The woman who was our 
 
8 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 guide recited her story with such glib professional 
 facility, and pulled out bars, and shoved back the 
 doors, and showed the sharp spikes, all with such a 
 cheery smile, that to me it robbed the cruel stone 
 statue of much of its atmosphere of the horrible. I 
 even felt a morbid impulse to step into the image's em- 
 brace and let the spiked doors be partly shut on me ; 
 but for the Fraulein's sake I forbore, and hurried her 
 out as quickly as possible into her " overworld." 
 
 " 0, never would I live in this Niirnberg, my lady," 
 she said; " at each step I see ghost; and see color of 
 that water," she added, pointing to the sluggish river : 
 " it are black with the old sins." 
 
 How she laughed the Nuremberg jewellers into sell- 
 ing me oxidized silver cheaper than they meant to ! 
 How she persuaded the stolid Nuremberg " cocher " to 
 drive faster, at least ten times faster, than was his 
 wont! And how, most marvellous of all, she con- 
 vinced the keeper of the Nuremberg cemetery where 
 Albert Diirer was buried, that it could do no harm for 
 me to bring away a big bunch of bright sumac leaves 
 from one of the trees ! I should as soon have thought 
 of appealing to one of the carved Baumgartner burgh- 
 ers on their stone slabs to give me permission ; but the 
 Fraulein was too much for the keeper. He turned his 
 back, so as not to seem to condone the offence, and 
 satisfied his conscience by calling out, "Enough, enough, 
 you have taken enough," several times before we were 
 ready to stop picking. How quickly she saw and how 
 keenly she felt the best things ! Not a line of Adam 
 Kraft's or Peter Vischer's carving was lost on her. 
 Not a single picturesque face or group escaped her. 
 Much more I saw, in that one day of Nuremberg, for 
 having her by my side ; and very short I found the 
 next day's railroad ride to Mayence, by help of her 
 droll comments on all that happened. 
 
 Curled up in one corner were a fat old German and 
 his wife, and opposite them an officer with his young 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. g 
 
 bride. The officer and the burgher talked incessantly 
 with great vehemence. I saw that the Fraulein lis- 
 tened with keenest attention ; it was evidently all she 
 could do to keep quiet. At the first opportunity she 
 said to me : — 
 
 " my lady, he are ultramontane, the fat man ; he 
 are Senator; they talk always about our government. 
 I like so much to hear what they say ; but the fat man, 
 he are such fool." 
 
 The Senator's wife looked like a man in woman's 
 clothes, — hard-featured, bony, hideous. As night 
 came on she proceeded to make her toilet ; she took 
 off her boots, and put on huge worsted shoes, bound 
 with scarlet ; on her head she put a knit cap, of 
 cranberry red; above that, the hood of her gray 
 waterproof; above all this, a white silk handkerchief, 
 tied tight under her chin ; on top of all, her 
 round hat. The effect was like nothing in earth 
 but a great woollen gargoyle. The Senator looked 
 on as complacently as if it were the adorning of 
 Venus herself. 
 
 " my lady, have you seen what she make for 
 mouth when she speak ? " said the Fraulein. I had 
 not, for we were on the same side of the carriage. 
 " My lady, you must see. I will make that she speak 
 for you," said the malicious Fraulein, drawing nearer 
 to the unsuspecting victim, and asking some question 
 in the friendliest of voices. I forgave the unchristian 
 trick, however, at sight of the mouth in motion. 
 
 After the Senator and the officer had both left 
 the carriage, the Fraulein told me the substance of 
 their discussion ; political questions seemed familiar 
 to her ; she had her own opinion of every candidate ; 
 and 0, how she did hate the ultramontanes ! " 
 my lady, this Senator he wish to have for president 
 a man who make always his walk backwards. Never 
 he go forwards." 
 
 It took me some seconds to comprehend that this 
 
io A GERMAN LANDLADY, 
 
 was the Fraulein's English for a conservative, the 
 thing she hated with her whole heart. 
 
 The sun shone brightly on the fields and woods. 
 She exclaimed with delight at each new mile : " 0, 
 how I like to see smoke go up from house ! " 
 
 "0, find you not the world nice, my lady? I find 
 so nice, I could kiss the world. Always people say, 
 this world are bad world. The world are good 
 world. It are mens that are bad." 
 
 Then she would startle me again by farmer-like 
 comments on the country. 
 
 " 0, here are all such poor wood country ; I would 
 cut down such poor wood, and make land for other 
 thing. 
 
 " Now begin to be more good stone, here. 
 
 ••' look, my lady, what nice farm with much mead- 
 ow for coos." (Never could I persuade the Fraulein 
 to say cows.) 
 
 At last I said to her: Fraulein, you talk like a 
 farmer." 
 
 " Ach, my lady," and her face grew clouded, " I 
 make farm for eleven year. I am great farmer. That 
 is all what I love. 0, I could die, some time, I 
 such hungry have for my beautiful farm. " 
 
 By this time I was prepared to hear that my 
 Fraulein had at one time or another in her life filled 
 every office for which German towns have an opening, 
 from burgomaster down ; but that she had been a 
 farmer I never suspected. 
 
 " You must tell me, Fraulein, all about it, when we 
 are on the Rhine. We can talk quietly there." 
 
 " Yes, my lady, I tell you. It are like story in 
 book." 
 
 For a few moments she looked dreamily and sadly 
 out of the window ; but her nature had no room for 
 continued melancholy. Soon she began to laugh again, 
 at sight of the slow, ditch-like Main, on which un- 
 wieldy boats and sloops were wriggling along. 
 
A GERMAN LANDLAD Y. Y j 
 
 " my lady, this river go all the way as if he think 
 each minute, ' I go no farther. ' " 
 
 Match that who can for a hit at a sluggish river. 
 
 At one of the stations I saw her talking with a con- 
 ductor on another train bound back to Nuremberg. 
 
 u I ask for my cousin. He are ober-conductor on 
 that train. I send him note. He can see me when I 
 come back. He will be in Heaven when he get my 
 note." And her face twinkled more like the face of 
 fifteen than of fifty. I looked inquiringly. 
 
 "He are my cousin; but I love he not; but he 
 write me every year, for tirteen year, ' Will you marry 
 me ? ' and I write to he : ' Thank you, thank you, but 
 I think not to marry you, nor any other man. Live 
 well, live well.' And he speak no more, till come same 
 time next year ; but always he say to all peoples, that 
 he will me marry. He wait till I be glad of he. But I 
 think he wait till I die. And his mother she hate me, 
 because she wish that he had wife to take he out of her 
 house. He make her cry so much, so much. He is 
 so — how do you say, my lady, when peoples is all 
 time like this?" and in an instant she had utterly 
 transformed her face, so that she could have passed 
 any police officer in the world, however he had been 
 searching for her, so cross, so glum, so hateful did she 
 become from eyebrows to chin. Never off the stage, 
 and rarely on it, have I seen such power of mimicry 
 as had this wonderful old Fraulein. 
 
 " He are always like that, my lady, all time, morning, 
 noon, night, all year; and he say every day to his 
 mother, ' Hold tongue ! I will not have wife, if I can- 
 not have Caroline.'" This last sentence she pronounced 
 with a slow, sullen, dogged drawl, which would have 
 made the fortune of an actress. 
 
 " Fraulein," I said, " you ought to have been an 
 actress." 
 
 " Yes, my lady, I think, " she replied, as simply as 
 a child, with no shade of vanity in her manner. " I 
 
I2 A GERMAN' LANDLADY. 
 
 would be rich woman now. When I was a child, a 
 great manager in Augsburg he ask my grandfather to 
 give me to study with his daughter. He say I make 
 good, and be great player ; but in those days no people 
 liked artists like to-day, and my grandfather he are so 
 angry, and he say, ' G-o away ; come no more in my 
 house.' " 
 
 Thus laughing and listening, and looking out on the 
 pleasant meadows of the Main, we came to Mayence, 
 and at Mayence took boat to go down the Rhine. 
 This was the Fraulein's first sight of the Rhine. All the 
 tenderness and pride and romance of her true German 
 ^oul were in her eyes, as the boat swung slowly round 
 from the pier, and began to glide down the river. And 
 now began a new series of surprises. From Mayence 
 to Cologne there was not a ruin of which my Fr'aulein 
 did not know the story. Baedeker was superseded, 
 except for the names of places ; as soon as I mentioned 
 them to her she invariably replied, " yes, I know ; 
 and have you read, my lady, how," etc. The Johannis- 
 berg Castle, given to Metternich by his Emperor, the 
 cruel Hatto's Tower, the Devil's Ladder, the Seven 
 Yirgins, the Lurley, the Brothers, Rolandseck and Non- 
 nenwerth, — she knew them all by heart ; and for the 
 sake of hearing the time-worn old stories, in her de- 
 licious broken English, I pretended to have forgotten all 
 the legends. Nothing moved her so much as the sight 
 of the two rocky peaks on which the two brothers had 
 lived, and looked down on the Bornhofen Convent in 
 which their beloved Hilclegarde was shut up. 
 
 " 0, each brother, he could see her if she walk in that 
 garden," she said, with tears in her eyes. "Now, it come 
 no more that a man love so much, so long so true." 
 
 Just beyond the Brothers we passed the great Ma- 
 rienburg water-cure. Reading from Baedeker, I said : 
 " Fr'aulein, that would be a cheap place to live ; only 
 twelve thalers a week for board and lodging and med- 
 ical attendance." 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 *3 
 
 " no, my dear lady. It are not cheap, for there be 
 nothing to eat, At end of eight day the man from Was- 
 sercure he shall be so thin, so thin, it shall shine the 
 sun through him." 
 
 Throughout our whole journey the Fraulein's aston- 
 ishment was unbounded at the poor fare and the high 
 prices. In her beautiful goodness, she had supposed 
 that all landlords were content, as she, with moderate 
 profits, and anxious, as she, jto give to their guests the 
 best food. 
 
 " my lady, find you this chicken good ? " 
 
 " Not very, Fraulein. What is the matter with it ? " 
 
 " 0, the bad man, the bad man, to ask for this 
 chicken one gulden. He are old chicken, my lady, 
 and he are boiled before he are in oven. 0, I know 
 very well. 0, I win much money by this journey; 
 never before had I courage to give old chicken. Now 
 I give!" 
 
 Much I fear me that from this time henceforth the 
 lodgers in my dear Fraulein's house will not find it 
 such a marvel of cheap comfort as we did. 
 
 " my lady," she said one day, "if you come again 
 to me, you shall all have as before. But to other peo- 
 ples, I no more give beefsteak for fifteen kreutzers. I 
 will be more rich, I have been ass." 
 
 By dint of the Cologne and Diisseldorf line of steam- 
 boats, and the Netherland steamship line, and endless 
 questioning and unlading and lading, the Fraulein and I 
 and the trunks at last came to land at Rotterdam. We 
 had a day at Cologne, a night at Diisseldorf, and one 
 never-to-be-forgotten night on the river. At Diissel- 
 dorf, we wandered about the streets for an hour and a 
 half seeking where to lay our heads. Here the poor 
 Fraulein had on her hands, besides me, an English 
 barrister and his wife, who could speak no German, 
 and who drifted very naturally into our wake. What 
 a procession we were at eleven o'clock of the darkest 
 sort of night, nobody knowing just were he was going, 
 
r4 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 each person thinking somebody else was taking the 
 lead ! Suddenly the porters ahead of us plumped our 
 trunks down in the middle of the street at the feet of 
 two men with lanterns. 
 
 " Really, aw, now this is, aw, the most extraordi- 
 nary place for, a custom-house, aw, 'pon my honor," 
 said the English barrister, whose name was not Dun- 
 dreary. 
 
 " Have you meat or sausages ? " said the biggest 
 man, flashing his lantern-light full into our dismayed 
 faces. " mercy, no ! " shouted we with bursts of 
 laughter, and such evident honesty, that he let us go, 
 contenting himself with punching the sides of all the 
 carpet-bags. 
 
 " Fraulein, did you tell that man you had no sau- 
 sages ? " said I, sure she could not have eaten up the 
 six I saw her buy at Cologne. 
 
 " My dear lady, he say, ' Have you meat or sausage ?' 
 and I say, ' No, I have no meat.' I not make lie, I 
 make diplomatique." 
 
 From Diisseldorf to Rotterdam it was a day and a 
 night and half a day. The Rhine stretched broader 
 and broader. The shores of Holland seemed slowly 
 going under water, and the windmill arms beat the 
 air wildly like struggling arms of drowning monsters. 
 It was as cold as winter in the cabin : and it rained 
 pitilessly on the deck. The poor Fraulein read all the 
 magazines which I had bought for her in Cologne, and 
 an old comic almanac which she borrowed from the 
 steward, and at last curled herself up in a corner and 
 went to sleep in despair. The night differed from the 
 day only in being a little colder and darker, and in the 
 Fraulein's having a red-flannel petticoat over her head. 
 When I waked up and saw her pleasant great face in 
 this ruddy halo of fiery flannel, I felt as comforted as 
 if it had been a noonday sun. 
 
 It was at noon of a Thursday that we came, as I 
 said, to land at Rotterdam ; but this is hardly the 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 15 
 
 proper phrase in which to describe arriving at a place 
 which is nine parts water. Venice seems high and 
 dry in comparison with it; and the fact that you go 
 about in boats at Venice, and in cabs at Rotterdam, 
 only serves to make the wateriness of Rotterdam more 
 noticeable. 
 
 " my lady, it are all one bridge from one water to 
 another water," said Fraulein, as we drove up and 
 down and across canal after canal to find the house of 
 Moses Ezekiel, the Jew, who is a money-changer. It 
 rained dismally, but the Dutchwomen were out on all 
 the doorsteps, with pails of water, scrubbing and wiping 
 and brushing and rinsing, with cloths and mops and 
 brooms, as if they were enchanted by some soap-and- 
 watery demon. Windows shone like mirrors; door- 
 handles glittered like jewels. 
 
 " 0, how they do are clean, these Dutch ! " said 
 the Fraulein, taking account with a housekeeper's eye 
 of all this spotlessness. 
 
 How sorry I grew as the hour came for me to say 
 good by to this dear, honest, droll, loving woman I 
 cannot tell. The last thing she did for me was to look 
 at the sheets in the dreary little berth in which must 
 be spent my one night between Rotterdam and Lon- 
 don, and to say with great indignation to the surprised 
 stewardess. "Call you those sheets clean, in English ? 
 Never my lady sleep in such sheets, from Munich to 
 Rotterdam. 0, but I think a steamschiff (boat) are 
 place for bad peoples to be punish for sin! " 
 
 Then she cried over me a little and went away. I 
 watched her till she had shut the cab door, and was 
 being whirled off to take the early train for Munich. 
 Then I too shed a few tears, saying to myself, " God 
 bless the old darling ! I shall never see her like again." 
 
 The story of the Fraulein's life I feel a hesitancy 
 about telling. It stands out so in my memory in its 
 quaint, picturesque, eloquent broken English, that to 
 try to reproduce it is like trying to describe one of 
 
1 6 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 Teniers's pictures of peasant life. But nothing, not 
 even the dulness of grammatical speech, can rob it of 
 all its flavor of romance, and no one but myself will 
 know how much it loses in my hands. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Her father was a Suabian hunter, and one of the 
 king's rangers. Her mother was a daughter of a 
 subaltern officer. There were ten children, of which 
 my Fraulein and her twin brother were the youn- 
 gest. They were poor but gay, living a free life in 
 the woods, with venison for dinner every day. When 
 the little Caroline — for now I must give her her 
 name — was three years old her father died ; but she 
 never forgot him, remembering to this day, she says, 
 more vividly than almost anything else in her life, how 
 he used to come home in his ranger's uniform, and tak- 
 ing her on one arm and her twin brother on the other, 
 toss them both up in the air, calling her his little 
 " rusty angel," in affectionate jest at her freckled skin. 
 
 One year later the mother died, and the ten children, 
 left with very little money, were scattered here and 
 there, in houses of friends and relatives. Caroline was 
 sent to her paternal grandfather, who was a govern- 
 ment advocate in Augsburg. The grandmother had 
 written that she would take the handsomest of the six 
 little girls, and the lot fell on Caroline. 0, what a pic- 
 ture it was she drew of her arrival, late at night, at 
 the fine house in Augsburg ! She was carried, a poor 
 little frozen bundle of baby, into a great parlor, where 
 her grandparents with a small party of friends were 
 playing whist. The servant set her on the piano 
 while they unrolled her wrappings, one after another, 
 for it was a cold winter night. 
 
 " Then at last out came I ; and they stand me up on 
 the piano, and my grandmother she say, ' Mein G-ott! 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 17 
 
 if this be the handsome, what are the rest ? ' And 
 one old servant, — and she I hate all my life, — she 
 put both her hands high, and she say, ' Mein G-ott, she 
 have red hair and rusty skin ! ' " 
 
 In a few days, however, the little red-haired, rusty- 
 skinned child became the pet of the whole house ; and 
 from this time till her grandmother's death Caroline was 
 happy. But before she was six she had become such 
 an unmanageable little hoyden, that her grandparents, 
 in despair, shut her up in a convent school in Augsburg, 
 only allowing her to come home for Saturdays and 
 Sundays and the vacations. In this school she spent 
 seven years, and came out, at thirteen, a full-grown 
 woman, knowing a little of many things, but no one 
 thing well, and too full of animal life to be held with 
 any bonds. That very year came her first lover, ask- 
 ing to marry her. 
 
 " My grandfather, he send for me, and I come, like I 
 go always on one foot, jumping like cat for bird ; and 
 there sit this man I know not ; and my grandfather he 
 point to me, and he say, 'You think to marry that 
 child? Look at her! '" I am sure that the Fraulein 
 was too modest to tell me how beautiful she was as a 
 young girl. But I can easily make the picture for my- 
 self. She was above the medium height, and very 
 slender; her cheeks were red, her forehead high and 
 white ; her eyes the brightest and wickedest hazel, and 
 her mouth and chin piquant and wilful and tender and 
 strong, altogether. Not often does the world see just 
 such a face as she must have had in her youth. 
 
 The next year the grandmother died, and now be- 
 gan dark days for Caroline. Two of her aunts, who 
 had not loved her father, came to keep her grand- 
 father's house. They locked up her piano. They took 
 away the pretty clothes her grandmother had given 
 her. They gave her more and more hard work to do, 
 until in one short year she was like a servant in the 
 house. Then they sent her away to another aunt's 
 
1 8 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 house, on pretence of a visit, and kept her there 
 three months ; and when she returned, she found that 
 her grandfather, who was now very old and imbecile, 
 had married a new wife. 
 
 " Now came for me the worst of all the time. My 
 grandfather's wife, she say, ' You must not stay here, I 
 will not have, you are too fine lady. You can go earn 
 your bread like others.' And I say, ' 0, what can I 
 do ? I nothing know, where can I go ? ' And, my 
 lady, I are only fifteen when she tell me to go make 
 living for myself." 
 
 The grandfather was too old and feeble to interfere, 
 and moreover had been prejudiced against Caroline by 
 his wife and daughters. So the child went out into 
 the world, with a little bundle of clothes and a few 
 gulden in her pocket. She had about one hundred 
 dollars a year from her father's estate, which luckily 
 was in the hands of a trustee, or the cruel aunts would 
 have robbed her of that. A kind neighbor took her 
 in, and tried to cheer her ; but her heart was broken. 
 " All day, my lady, I cry and I cry, till I look so ugly 
 nobody would take such ugly girl to live in house for 
 servant. My face get quite another shape." 
 
 At last the good neighbor came home one day in 
 
 great delight, and told Caroline that the Baroness 
 
 had seen her in church, and liked her face so much 
 that she had asked her name, and now sent to know 
 if she would come and live with her as nurse for her 
 three little children. 
 
 " This are like help from Heaven, my lady ; and 
 when I go to Baroness, she take me by chin, and 
 she say, ' "Would you like to live in my house ? ' 
 And I cry so, I can no more speak, and I say, ' 0, 
 I glad of any house, so I have home.' " 
 
 For three years she lived with the Baroness, who 
 proved a kind and wise mistress. The little children 
 were sweet and lovable, and " I think I stay in 
 that house till my time come to be died," said the 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. IQ 
 
 Fraulehi, with tender wet eyes. But one day came a 
 sharp, authoritative letter from, her grandfather, order- 
 ing her to return home at once. 
 
 " I get great afraid, I think he wish to me kill, 
 and I would not go; but the Baroness say, 'No, 
 he are your grandfather, you must go.' So I go, 
 and my grandfather he look at me with such angry 
 eyes I am sick, I cannot stand up ; and he say, 
 'The Baron love you too much. You are vile, bad 
 girl. You go no more to his house. I will you 
 shut up.'" 
 
 Cruel, idle tongues had done poor Caroline this 
 harm. Probably the scandal rose from the careless 
 jest of some thoughtless man or woman, who had ob- 
 served the beautiful face of the young nursery-maid in 
 the Baron's house. " I should make lie, my lady," 
 said the Fraulein here, " if I say that the Baron speak 
 ever to me one word not like my father. He good 
 man." 
 
 After a few wretched weeks in the grandfather's 
 house Caroline found a second home in the family 
 
 of the Countess of Augsburg. Here she lived 
 
 for seven years as lady's-maid to the old Countess, 
 who loved her much. "But the young Countess, 
 she love me not. She hate me. It are like cat 
 see dog always when we see each other, we so 
 hate ; but my old Countess, she say always to me, 
 ' Caroline, have patient, have patient ; for my 
 sake go you not away.' " At last came a day when, 
 for some trifling provocation, the young Countess 
 took Caroline's two ears in her noble hands, and 
 jerked her head violently back and forth, until the 
 girl could hardly see. 
 
 "Many time, my lady, I say to her, 'Take your 
 hands away, I will not from any man this bear'; 
 and at last, my lady, I make so," said the Frau- 
 lein, hitting out from the shoulder with a great 
 thrust which a prize-fighter might admire, "and she 
 
20 
 
 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 go back against the wall; and the old Count, he 
 come flying and scream, 'You kill my daughter, 
 you shall to prison go.' And he put his hand on 
 me, and I make so again, my lady, that he go 
 back against the other wall. 0, I was strong like 
 one hundred men! And my poor old Countess she 
 come with her two hands tight, and she cry, '0 
 Caroline, Caroline, be not like this; go not away 
 irom me.' And I say to her, 'My dear lady, I 
 no more can bear. I go away to-night'; and I go 
 to my room, and in middle of my angry I stop 
 to laugh, to see the old Count like he pinned to 
 the wall where I put him with my one arm, and 
 the young Countess like she pinned to the other 
 wall,' where I put her with my other arm." 
 
 In an hour Caroline had packed her boxes, and 
 was ready to leave the house, but she found her- 
 self a prisoner in her room. The door was firmly 
 locked, and to all her cries she could get no answer. 
 All night long she walked up and down with her 
 bonnet and cloak on. At eight in the morning the bell 
 rang as usual for her to go to the Countess. "Ha ! " 
 say I, "the old Count he think I go to my lady, 
 for her I so love. But I open my door, I have heard 
 he come like cat and unlock with key ; and I go 
 straight to big door of great hall ; and at door stand 
 old Count, and he say, ' What mean you ? Go to the 
 Countess.' And I say, ' No, I go no more to Coun- 
 tess, I go to burgomaster. And I look at he so he 
 no more dare move. I think," with a chuckle of 
 delight at the memory, "he no more wish to feel 
 how heavy are my hand, for he are poor little man. 
 I could him kill, like chicken, and so he know very 
 well." 
 
 Straight to the burgomaster the excited Caroline 
 went, and told her story. For once a burgomaster 
 was on the side of right ; reprimanded the Count 
 severely, and compelled him to give up all Caroline's 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 2 l 
 
 fcoxes, and pay her the full sum due of her wages, 
 Now she was, for the first time for many years, thor- 
 oughly happy. She had saved money in her seven 
 years' service, and she had become a skilful dress- 
 maker. She hired a little apartment, and sent for an 
 old servant who had been fond of her in her child- 
 hood. 
 
 Old Monika was only too glad to come and live 
 once more with her young mistress ; and as for Caro- 
 line, after ten years of serving, to be once more 
 independent, to have an affectionate waiting-woman 
 ready to do her bidding, — "it was like Heaven, 
 my lady. In morning, Monika she bring me my 
 bath, like I lady again ; and she say, ' Fraulein, my 
 Fraulein.' And I make my eyes like I sleep, sleep, 
 so that I can hear her say ' my Fraulein ' many times, 
 \t so me please. Then she be fear that I died; and 
 she come close and take me by shoulder ; and then 
 I give jump quick out of bed, and make her great 
 fright and great laugh. But always I eat with my 
 Monika, as if I not lady, for I say, I too have been 
 servant; and I cannot eat by self; I have not hun- 
 gry ; and I love my old Monika very much." 
 
 The good Countess sent all her friends to Caroline, 
 and in a short time she had more dressmaking than 
 she could do, even with Monika's help; but she would 
 not employ workwomen. She tried the experiment 
 once, and had a seamstress for three months, but she 
 could not endure the trouble and annoyance of it. " 
 my lady, I get in such great angry with she, she make 
 so stupid things. I send she away. I think I be died 
 with angry, if she not go." 
 
 It was, after all, but a bare living that one woman's 
 hands could earn with a needle in Augsburg, in those 
 days. Caroline and her Monika had only about two 
 hundred dollars a year. 
 
 " How could you live on so little money, dear Frau- 
 lein? ' said I„ 
 
22 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 11 my lady, in those time all are so cheap. I get 
 pound of meat for nine kreutzers, now it are twenty. 
 I get quart milk for three kreutzers, now it are five. I 
 get nine eggs for four kreutzers, now I must pay two 
 kreutzers for one egg ; and in Augsburg then I buy for 
 one kreutzer all vegetable Monika and I eat for two 
 day, and now in my house in Munich I give six kreut- 
 zers for what I must give one person at one time." 
 
 Even at these low prices they had to live sparingly : 
 one half-pound of meat three times a week ; never 
 anything but coffee and bread for breakfast; once a 
 week a glass of wine. But Caroline was happy and 
 content. "Never. did I think to ask G-od for more 
 than I have. I are so glad with my Monika ; and I 
 sing at my sew all day." 
 
 But fate was spinning a new tint into Caroline's life. 
 In the spring of her third year of dress-making she 
 found herself seized with a sudden ambition to go to 
 Munich and get new fashions. 
 
 " It are great journey for me to take alone; and I had 
 not money that Monika go too ; I know I need not to 
 go ; but I cannot be free night nor day from thinking I 
 will to Munich go, and get fashion for my ladies." 
 
 On the fourth day after her arrival in Munich the 
 poor solitary Augsburg dress-maker was taken ill with 
 a terrible fever. In great fright, the lodging-house 
 keeper had her carried to the hospital, and gave her- 
 self no further concern about the friendless stranger. 
 There poor Caroline lay in a crowded ward, so delirious 
 with fever that she could not speak intelligently, and 
 yet, by one of those inexplicable mental freaks some- 
 times seen in such cases, quite aware of all which was 
 passing about her. She heard the doctors pronounce 
 her case hopeless ; she knew when they cut off her 
 beautiful hair, but she tried in vain to speak, or to 
 refrain from speaking when the mad raving impulse 
 seized her. 
 
 At length one night, the third night, between twelve 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 23 
 
 and one o'clock, she suddenly opened her eyes, and 
 saw a tall man bending over her bed, with a candle in 
 one hand. 
 
 " my lady, never can I tell what I saw in his 
 face ; never, my lady, have you seen so beautiful face. 
 I say to myself, ' 0, I think I be died, and this are the 
 Jesu Christ; or if I not be died, this are my darling for 
 all my life.' And he smile and say, ' Are you better? ' 
 And I shut my eyes, and I say to myself, 'I will not 
 speak. It are Jesu Christ.' " 
 
 This was the young Dr. Anton , who had been, 
 
 from the moment Caroline was brought into the hospi- 
 tal, so untiring a watcher at her bedside, that all his 
 fellow-students persecuted him with raillery. 
 
 " But my Anton he say to them, ' I do not know 
 what it are, I think that beautiful girl ' (for, my lady, 
 all peoples did call me beautiful ; you would not now 
 think, now I am such ugly, thick, old woman), — ' I 
 think that beautiful girl die. But if she not die, she 
 are my wife. You can laugh, all you ; but I have no 
 other wife in this world. ' " 
 
 It was in very few words that my Fraulein told me 
 this part of her story. But we were two women, look- 
 ing into each other's wet eyes, and I knew all she did 
 not say. 
 
 They could not be married, Anton and Caroline ; for 
 the paternal government of Bavaria, not liking to have 
 too large pauper families left on its hands, forbids men 
 to marry until they can deposit a certain sum in gov- 
 ernment trust for the support of their families, if they 
 die. Anton had not a cent in the world : neither had 
 Caroline. For four years they worked and waited, he 
 getting slowly but surely into practice ; she, laying by 
 a gulden at a time out of her earnings. Once in four 
 weeks he came to Augsburg to see her, sometimes to 
 stay a day, sometimes only a few hours. " It took so 
 much money for journey, he could not more often come. 
 But he say, 'My liebling, I may die before we can 
 
24 
 
 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 marry; I will make sure to kiss you once in four 
 week.' " 
 
 There was, perhaps, a prophetic instinct in Anton's 
 heart. Before the end of the fourth year his health 
 failed, and he was obliged to leave Munich, and go 
 home to his mother's house. For six months Caroline 
 did not see him. Week by week came sadder ana sad- 
 der letters. Anton was dying of consumption. At last 
 his mother wrote, " If you want to see Anton alive, 
 come." 
 
 At sight of Caroline he revived, so much so that the 
 physicians said, if he had no return of hemorrhage, he 
 might possibly live three months ; longer than that he 
 could not hold out. 
 
 cruel, paternal government of Bavaria! Here 
 were this man and woman, held apart from each other, 
 even in the valley of the shadow of death, by the hu- 
 mane law providing against pauper children. 
 
 The one desire left in Anton's heart was to be moved 
 to Augsburg, and die in Caroline's house. He and his 
 mother were not in sympathy ; the family was large and 
 poor; he was in the way. Then Caroline said, " Come." 
 
 " my lady, you think not it was harm. His moth- 
 er she go on knees to me, and say, ' Take Anton with 
 you.' And I know I can keep him alive many weeks 
 in my house; he will be so glad when he are alone 
 with me, he will not die so soon. No one could speak 
 harm of me, for this man I lead like little child, and lift 
 in my arms, he are so sick." 
 
 So Caroline gave up her apartment in Augsburg, 
 hired a little farm-house just out of the city, and took 
 her lover home to die. The farm was just large enough 
 for her to keep two cows and raise a few vegetables. 
 The house had but one good room, and that was fitted 
 up for Anton. Caroline and Monika slept in two little 
 closets which opened from the kitchen. Before day- 
 light Monika went into the city to sell milk and vege- 
 tables ; while she was gone Caroline took care of the 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 25 
 
 stable and the animals, and worked in the garden. 
 Not one kreutzer's worth of work did they hire. The 
 two women's hands did all. 
 
 In the sweet country air and in the sight of Caroline, 
 Anton grew daily stronger, until at the end of three 
 months he could walk a few rods without leaning on 
 her arm, and hope sprang up once more in their hearts. 
 
 Then, lured by that illusive dream, which has cost so 
 many dying men and women so dear, they started for 
 Italy to escape the severe winter winds of Augsburg. 
 They went in a little one-horse wagon, journeying a few 
 miles a day, resting at farm-houses, where the brave 
 Caroline took care of her own horse, like a man, and 
 then paid for their lodging by a day's dress-making for 
 the women of the family. In this way they spent two 
 months ; but Anton grew feebler instead of better, and 
 when they reached home Caroline lifted him in her 
 arms, and carried him from the wagon tp the bed. 
 
 '■ When I lay him down, he look up in my face with 
 such look, and he say, l Liebling, it are no use. I have 
 spent all my money for nothing. Now I die.' " 
 
 The journey, cheaply as they had made it, had used 
 up every kreutzer of the earnings which had been put 
 by towards their marriage. Now they had nothing, 
 except what Caroline could earn, with now and then a 
 little help from Anton's mother. But Caroline's heart 
 never failed her; she thought of but one thing, the 
 keeping Anton alive. 
 
 " All day, my lady, it are as if I see Death stand at 
 door ; and I look at him in eyes, and I say, ' You go 
 away ! I give not Anton to you yet. Jesu Christ, 
 let me keep my Anton one day the more.' " 
 
 And she kept him day by day, until the doctors said 
 his life was a miracle ; and Anton himself said to her 
 sometimes, " liebling, let me go ; it is better for you 
 that I die." 
 
 At last the day came, but it was nearly at the end of 
 the second year. It was late in the spring. Anton 
 
2 6 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 had not left his room for weeks ; but one morning he 
 said to her that he thought he would like to sit under 
 the trees once more. 
 
 " And, my lady, the minute he say that, I know 
 he think it are his last day. So I dress him in warm 
 clothes, and I carry him out in my arms, and put him 
 in big chair I make myself out of old died tree ; and the 
 sun it shine, shine, so warm ; and I read to him out 
 of book he like. But I see he no more hear, and very 
 quick he say, ' Come close to me ' ; and I go close, and 
 he put his two hands on my face and say, ' Liebling, I 
 think G-od be always good to you for your good to 
 me.' And then he point with finger that I take him 
 in house ; and Monika and I we have but just get him 
 in bed, when he fall back, and are died in one minute ; 
 and, my lady, I can say true, that in the first minute I 
 was glad for my Anton that he have no more pain." 
 
 Soon after Anton was buried came Anton's second 
 cousin, Herr Bridmacher, to see Caroline. The Herr 
 Bridmacher owned a great farm of seven hundred acres 
 near Starnberg. By this time all Anton's friends, far 
 and near, had heard of the faithful and beautiful Caro- 
 line, who had so well administered the little farm, and 
 made Anton's last months so comfortable. Herr Brid- 
 macher offered her good wages and absolute control of 
 the farm. It was the very life she most liked, and it 
 offered an escape from Augsburg, the very air of which 
 had become insupportable to her. She accepted the 
 offer immediately, and at the end of a week was walk- 
 ing by Herr Bridmacher's side, up the broad road of 
 Brentonrede farm. 
 
 " my lady, my heart he go down in me when I see 
 that farm. The Herr Bridmacher he have been fool. 
 He have the same thing in the same field all his life, 
 till the ground be no more good ; and he are so mean, 
 he have on that seven hundred acre only seven ser- 
 vant ; he have four coos, three horse, and two pair 
 oxen, and one are lame. And the house, it be shame to 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 27 
 
 see such house ; it let water come in in many place ; 
 and the floor it go up, and it go down, like the cellar 
 are all of hills. And I say to him, ' It are well for 
 you, Herr Bridmacher, that I not see your fine farm 
 before I come. But I have my word given, and I go 
 not back. I stay.' Then he begin to make great com- 
 pliment to me, how he think I do all well. But I say, 
 1 0, thank you, I not wish to hear. You think to jour- 
 ney, you have me told. The sooner you go, the better 
 I like. G-ood night, sir.' So I go to my bed; but all 
 night the wind he blow my windows so I cannot to 
 sleep ; but I say to myself, ' Caroline, if only that fool 
 go away, here are splendid farm for you.' So I am 
 quite quiet. And in the morning, Herr Bridmacher he 
 say, ' G-ood morning, good morning. I start to Italy 
 to-morrow'; and I say, 'I very glad to hear that. You 
 stay two years, I hope.' And when he go down the 
 road I stand at door, and I snap my two hands after 
 he, and I say, ' Long journey to you, my master.' " 
 
 With short intervals of interruption and annoyance 
 from Herr Bridmacher, Caroline had the management 
 of Brentonrede farm for eleven years. At end of that 
 time Brentonrede owned seventy-five cows, eight 
 horses, eight pairs of oxen, twenty-four calves, and 
 two hundred chickens. There were twenty-five work- 
 people, — seventeen men and eight women. The 
 house was in perfect repair, and the place had more 
 than doubled in value. Just before Caroline came to 
 him the poor silly Herr Bridmacher had offered it for 
 sale for sixty thousand gulden (about twenty-five 
 thousand dollars) ; after she left him he sold it for one 
 hundred and forty thousand gulden. 
 
 It would be impossible to reproduce the Fraulein's 
 graphic and picturesque story of her life during this 
 time. She had no neighbors, but she was never lonely. 
 Her whole soul was in her work. At three o'clock 
 every morning she rose, and gave the laborers their 
 first meal at four. Five times a day they were fed, the 
 
28 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 Brentonrede people : at four in the morning, bread, 
 soup, and potatoes ; at eight, bread and milk, or bread 
 and beer; at eleven, knoedels,* with which they had 
 either meat, pudding, or curds ; at four, bread and beer ; 
 and at six or eight, bread and soup. 
 
 One of her greatest troubles in the outset was the 
 religiousness of her work-people ; — the number of 
 Paternosters they insisted on saying every morning in 
 the little chapel on the place. 
 
 " my lady," she said, "I wish you could see that 
 chapel. Such a Mother G-oddess never did I see in my 
 life. She look so like fool, that when I go first in I 
 make that I drop something on floor I cannot find, so I 
 put my face close to floor, that they not see me laugh. 
 But I make she all clean ; and I make chapel all clean ; 
 and then I say to men, ' Very well ; if you need pray 
 fourteen Paternosters on week-day, you need pray 
 fourteen Paternosters on Sunday. So many as you 
 pray on week-day, it are my order that you pray on 
 Sunday, if you work at Brentonrede.' Then they 
 grumble, and they tell the priest. They like not to 
 take time that are their own time on Sunday to say 
 fourteen Paternosters ; but they like better to say 
 Paternosters in my time than to dig in field. So the 
 priest he put on his big hat, and he come to door, and 
 knock, knock ; and I go ; and he say, ' Are you the 
 Fraulein of Brentonrede ? ' And I say, ■ Yes, Father, 
 I are she.' And then he begin to say, 'Now, my 
 daughter,' with long face; and then he tell me that he 
 are told I have pigs in the chapel, and that I will not 
 let the people to pray. And I say, ' no, that are not 
 true.' And I take he to chapel, and show how clean it 
 are ; and only I have in corner two big bottle of vitriol, 
 which I have afraid to keep in house, because it are 
 such danger ; and I tell him I think Holy Mother G-od- 
 
 * Knoedels are dumplings made of flour, chopped herbs, and 
 sometimes a little ham. They are the common food of farmers 
 throughout Germany. 
 
4 GERMAN LANDLADY. 29 
 
 dess will be so good to keep it safe, that it blow not 
 up the. house. And he say that are no harm, but why- 
 do I not let the people to pray. And I tell him that I 
 say not the people shall not pray. I say they shall pray 
 fourteen Paternoster on Sunday, if they pray fourteen 
 Paternoster on week-day ; and since then they pray 
 but one Paternoster on week-day, so that they take 
 not time from their Sunday. And he scratch his head 
 very hard, and know not what to say me to that ; and 
 then I give him good bottle wine and a cheese, and I 
 say, ' Now, Father, it cannot be in this world that we 
 believe all what are telled. I do not believe what are 
 telled of you, and do you not believe any more what 
 are telled of me.' And he get red in the face, for 
 he know all peoples say his housekeeper are wife to 
 he ; and so he shake my hand, and he go away. And 
 always I hear after that he say, ■ The Fraulein of Bren- 
 tonrede she are good woman ; she are good Catholic' 
 But he know in his heart I laugh at he." 
 
 How she gloated over some of her harvest memo- 
 ries, — of wonderful afternoons in which more loads 
 of hay were piled up in Brentonrede barns than had 
 ever been known to be got in in one afternoon be- 
 fore. One particular wheat harvest, I remember, she 
 mentioned. She had seen at noon that a heavy storm 
 was coming up. Whole acres of wheat were lying cut, 
 ready to be made up into sheaves. " Then I call all the 
 men and women, and I say, 'If all the wheat are in be- 
 fore dark, I give you one cask beer, and two cheese, 
 and all bread you can eat, and a dance.' I think not it 
 could be ; but I work with them myself, and I tie up 
 with the straw till my hands they bleed, 0, so much ; 
 but I nothing care. And the wheat it are all in, my 
 lady, before nine o'clock, — twenty-five wagon-loads 
 in one afternoon ; and in all the country they tell it 
 for one great story that it was done in Brentonrede." 
 
 The Brentonrede farm soon became well known in 
 the whole region about Starnberg. Herr Bridmacher's 
 
3© A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 friends used to make it a stopping-place in their drives ; 
 and the Fraulein often entertained parties of them at 
 tea or luncheon. She was very proud of doing the 
 honors of Brentonrede ; and to these parties, and to 
 her two years of close intercourse with the invalid 
 Anton, she owed a certain savoir faire : which, added 
 to her native gracefulness and quickness of compre- 
 hension, would prevent her ever being embarrassed, I 
 think, in any situation. 
 
 In the tenth year of her Brentonrede life came a bur- 
 gomaster from a neighboring town to ask her to marry 
 him. By this time her love for Anton had taken the 
 healthful shape of tender, regretful memory, which 
 made no sorrow in her active, useful life, and set no 
 barrier between her and other men. But her heart 
 was wedded to Brentonrede farm. So, like a true di- 
 plomatist, she told Herr Bridmacher of this offer and 
 asked his advice. 
 
 "I know very well he not like that I leave farm. 
 He know he cannot make farm by heself. I think he 
 will marry me heself, to keep me for farm. I not love 
 he. no, my lady, I love no man after my Anton. But 
 I know he go on journey every year, sometimes for two 
 three year, and I think I like very well to be his wife, 
 and stay on farm while he go." 
 
 The Herr Bridmacher took the same view of it that 
 Caroline did. Of course he could not have her leave 
 the farm : so he said he would marry her when he 
 came back from Italy, — from a year's journey on 
 which he was about starting. The burgomaster was 
 sent away, and Caroline went contentedly on with her 
 farming for another year. When Herr Bridmacher 
 returned, and their marriage was again discussed, the 
 question of settlements came up, and upon this they 
 fell out. Caroline was firm in her demand that Bren- 
 tonrede should be settled on her and her children. 
 
 "I know very well, my lady, that all his people fine 
 people. They think I am only poor work-girl who can 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 3 1 
 
 make farm. Never I wish to go as his wife into one 
 of their house. It are only for love of farm that I 
 marry he ; if he die, and I not have farm, what I do 
 then ? " 
 
 But Herr Bridmacher was equally firm. He would 
 settle money on her, but not Brentonrede. Money 
 Caroline would not have, not even if it were enough to 
 buy another farm. It was Brentonrede she loved, and 
 she did not in the least love Herr Bridmacher. " I 
 know all the time he are fool, and like mule, beside," 
 she said; adding with the gravest simplicity, "But I 
 know he have been for ten year the most time away 
 from Brentonrede, and I think when I are his wife he 
 like it not even so much than before." 
 
 So Caroline and Herr Bridmacher parted in great 
 anger. With her savings she bought a little house in 
 the suburbs of Munich. But the city air oppressed her. 
 Her occupation was gone. At end of a year she sold 
 the house for two thousand gulden more than she gave 
 for it, and bought another, farther out of the city, with 
 a few acres of ground about it. Here she lived as she 
 had in Augsburg, keeping one servant, three cows, 
 hens and chickens, and working all day in a vegetable 
 and flower garden. 
 
 " my lady, it are like one picture, when I have 
 work there one year. Not one inch in all my place 
 but have a fine green leaf or flower growing on he ; 
 all peoples that drive by from Munich, they stop and 
 they look and they look, and I are so proud when 
 I hear them say, ' It are all one woman that do this 
 with her own hands.' " 
 
 One afternoon as the Fraulein sat alone in her little 
 sunny parlor, there was a ring at the door. 
 
 " I go, and I see, such nice Englishman ! I have 
 he seen before, many times, stands to look in my gar- 
 den. He are priest I know by his dress, — priest of 
 your church, my lady. Then he say, ' Do you live 
 here alone ? ' And I say, ' Yes.' And then he try to 
 
3 2 A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 say more, but he cannot German speak, and I no Eng- 
 lish understand. So he laugh, and he say, 'I come 
 again with my wife. She can all say in German.' " 
 
 The next day he came back with his wife, and the 
 thing they had to say was no more nor less than to tell 
 the Fraulein they were coming to spend the summer 
 in her house. Her face and the face of her garden had 
 been such magnets to them, that their hearts were set 
 on coming to live for six months where they could see 
 both every day. 
 
 "I say, ' But I know not how to do for high people. 
 I cannot make that you have comfortable.' But they 
 gay, ' We will you show all. We want little.' And 
 so they come. They take my two rooms up stairs ; 
 and they sit all day in my garden ; and the lady, she 
 grow so fat, and she say she are never so happy in all 
 her life, as in my house ; and they are, now these seven 
 years, my best friends in the world." 
 
 These best friends of the Fraulein's were an Eng- 
 lish clergyman and his wife ; and her acquaintance 
 with them was one of the crises in her romantic life. 
 In the autumn when it was necessary for them to 
 go back to Munich, they persuaded her to sell her 
 little farm (which was not so profitable as pretty) 
 and take part of a house in the city, and rent apart- 
 ments. She entered with many misgivings on this 
 untried experiment ; but her shrewd, sagacious na- 
 ture was as successful here as in remodelling Herr 
 Bridmacher's exhausted farm. She has lived in Mu- 
 nich for seven years. Her apartment has never, for 
 one month, stood empty, and she is only waiting for 
 the opportunity to add to it another whole floor. She 
 has nearly paid for her furniture, which is all thor- 
 oughly good and satisfactory, and she says, " If I 
 spare (save) very much and spend not on nothings, 
 I think in six year I have enough money to go live as 
 I like in country, and have garden." She yearns for 
 green fields, and the smell of the earth. I am not sure 
 
A GERMAN LANDLADY. 
 
 33 
 
 that the English clergyman did well to transplant her 
 within the city walls. 
 
 As for Herr Bridmacher, he came to grief, as might 
 have been predicted, soon after parting with Caroline. 
 After several unsuccessful attempts to find some one to 
 fill her place, he sold his farm for one hundred and 
 forty thousand gulden, put most of the money into a 
 commercial speculation and lost it. 
 
 The good Caroline, hearing a short time ago that he 
 was seen in Munich looking very shabby and out at 
 elbows, wrote asking him to come to her house. 
 
 " I could not bear, my lady, to think that I so com- 
 fortable in this nice house by the money he pay me, 
 and he have not money enough to go like gentleman as 
 he always go before ; and now I are old woman, I can 
 ask to my house if I like." 
 
 But Herr Bridmacher was too proud to come. 
 
 " He hate me. I hear from friend that know, that 
 he hate me, so much ! He say I are reason for all 
 his trouble. But I think he are reason heself. Ex- 
 cept for he had been one mule, I are in his house to- 
 day, and Brentonrede are worth three hundred thou- 
 sand gulden, and he have six children to make that 
 he are no more sorry." 
 
 Poor Herr Bridmacher ! From my heart I pity him, 
 when I think what he has lost. But I have almost 
 more resentment than pity, when I think that, but for 
 his foolish pride and obstinacy, my Fraulein would 
 have been to-day the loving mother of children, and the 
 gracious Lady of Brentonrede. 
 
 2* 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 u /^\ ASTUNA tantum una,"— " Only one Gastein,' 1 
 \JT — said the old archbishops of Salzburg, hun- 
 dreds of years ago. " Only one Grastein," echoes to- 
 day on lips and in hearts of all who are so fortunate 
 as to find their way into its enchanted valley. 
 
 " From Salzburg to Bad-G-astein, by Hallein and 
 Werfen 70-^ English miles, a journey of ten hours with 
 post-horses " ; " Route two hundred," in Murray's 
 G-uide-Book ; that is the skeleton of the story. Even 
 at Murray's best spinning, he only takes six pages to 
 tell it, and probably there have been people who did 
 the whole journey in ten hours. Bodies might; but 
 for souls what a horrible spiritual indigestion must fol- 
 low quick on the taking at one ten-hours sitting the 
 whole feast of this road ! 
 
 We did better. People who do just as we did will be- 
 gin by losing their temper at six o'clock in the morning 
 with the cross chambermaid of the Groldener Schiff in 
 Salzburg, eating a bad breakfast in its dirty dining- 
 room, taking delighted leave of its inexperienced land- 
 lord, and galloping out of town at seven to the tune 
 of one of Mozart's old melodies rung on chime-bells. 
 The great Salzburg plain is a goodly sight of a morn- 
 ing; circling meadows for miles, walled at last by 
 mountains which are so far and so green that it is not 
 easy to believe them six or eight thousand feet high ; 
 through the meadows the sluggish Salzach River; in 
 the middle of the meadows, and on the river, the shin- 
 ing Salzburg town ; in the middle of the town, high 
 up on a rocky crag, the silent Salzburg castle, gray, 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 35 
 
 turreted, and sure to last as long as the world. Those 
 old Archbishops of Salzburg knew how to live. Wher- 
 ever one comes upon traces of them, one is impressed 
 with their worldly wisdom. The impregnable castle 
 of Salzburg for a stronghold, with the Monchsberg for 
 pleasure-grounds, a riding-school cut out of solid rock 
 for exercise, Heilbrunn water-works for amusement, 
 and the Baths of G-astein for health and long life, — 
 what more could these jolly old King Coles ask, ex- 
 cept the privilege to kill all who disagreed with them ? 
 And that little privilege also they enjoyed for some 
 years, enlarging it by every possible ingenuity of cruel- 
 ty, as many stone dungeons with racks and oubliettes 
 still bear witness. 
 
 Four hours steadily up, up. Franz does not urge 
 his horses so much as he might. The nigh horse has 
 no conscience, and shirks abominably on the hills. At 
 last I venture to call Franz's attention to the fact, by a 
 few ill-spoken German substantives and adjectives, 
 with never a verb or a particle to hold them together. 
 " Ja, ja," he says, with unruffled complacency; but 
 pointing to the poor off mare, who is straining every 
 muscle in drawing three quarters of the load, "she is 
 a good one; she can pull," touching her up smartly 
 with the whip at the same time. We cross the Sal- 
 zach, which grows muddy and rough, fighting bravely 
 to bring down all the logs it can ; we leave the won- 
 derful Diirrenberg Mountain with its three-galleried 
 salt-mine, and we march steadily out towards the Tan- 
 nengebirge, which looks more and more threatening 
 every minute. Clouds wheel round its top. We know, 
 though we try not to believe, that storms are making 
 ready : they never look, not they, to see who or what 
 they may drown or hinder. Down the rain pours, and 
 we dash dripping into the basement story of the inn at 
 G-olling. It was like an Italian inn ; carriages, and horses, 
 and donkeys, and dogs, and cocks, and peasants, and 
 hay, and grain, and dirt, and dampness, all crowded 
 
36 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 under and among damp arches of whitewashed stone, 
 with only two ways of escape, — the low, broad door 
 through which we had driven in, and the rocky stairs 
 up into the heart of the house. How pitilessly the 
 rain fell ! Who of all the gods cared that we wanted 
 that evening to see the waterfall of the Schwarzbach, 
 the finest in all the German Alps, and that if we did 
 not see it then we should never see it, because early 
 the next day we must on to Gastein ? Still it rained. 
 Why should one not see a waterfall in a rain ? They 
 would not put one another out. This was clearly the 
 thing to be done. Ah, how long the poor damp man, 
 who took me in an einspanner to see that waterfall, 
 will remember the smiling, merciless American, who 
 sat silent, unterrified, and dry, behind the stout leather 
 boot, and went over meadow, through gate, across 
 stream, up gully, in the midst of thunder and lightning 
 and whirling sheets of rain, and never once relented in 
 her purpose of seeing the Schwarzbach ! Poor fellow ! 
 he shifted from puddle to puddle on his low seat, look- 
 ing furtively at me to see if I really meant to keep on ; 
 at last, in a climax of despair, he stood up, emptied the 
 cushion of water, coiled up the ends of the stout leath- 
 er reins edgewise into a kind of circular gridiron, sat 
 down doggedly on it, and never looked around again 
 till we reached the end of the road. Here his triumph 
 began ; for was not he to stay warm and comfortable 
 by a friend's fire, while I went on foot the rest of the 
 way to the waterfall ? This I had not understood be- 
 fore leaving the inn. " Was it very far ?" 
 
 " no, not far." 
 
 I never saw a Tyrolese man or woman who would 
 say that a place was far off. You might as well expect 
 a goat or a chamois to know distances. " no, not 
 far, only a little," they say ; and you toil and toil and 
 toil, and sit down a dozen times to rest, before you are 
 half-way there. However, if he had said it was ever 
 so far, I should have kept on. 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIJV. 37 
 
 " There was a path ? " 
 
 " yes " ; and here out skipped Undine to go and 
 show it to me. I did not need her, for there wound 
 the prophetic little brown path very plain among the 
 trees ; but it was a delight to see her flitting along be- 
 fore me. Bare-footed, bare-legged, bare-headed, bare- 
 necked, bare-armed, she did not lack so ve"ry much of 
 being bare all over ; and I do not suppose she would 
 have minded it any more than a squirrel, if she had been. 
 She looked back pityingly at me, seeing how much 
 my civilized gear hindered me from keeping up with 
 her, as she sprang from tree-root to tree-root, and 
 hopped from stone to stone in the water, — for in many 
 places the path was already under water. On the 
 right hand foamed the stream, not broad but deep, and 
 filled with great mossy boulders which twisted and 
 turned it at every step : on the left, fir-trees and larch- 
 es and still more mossy boulders. Every green thing 
 glistened, and trickled, and dripped; moss shone like 
 silver : and bluebells — ah, I think I alone know just 
 how bluebells manage in wet weather! Nobody 
 else ever saw so many in one half-hour of glorious 
 rain. 
 
 Soon I heard the voice of the fall ; a sudden turn in 
 the path and I saw it ; but I looked for the first few 
 seconds more at Undine. She stood, poised like a bird, 
 on an old tree-stump, pointing to the fall, and gazing 
 at me with an expression of calm superiority. The 
 longer I looked the more inscrutable seemed the water- 
 fall, and the wiser Undine, till I felt as I might in stand- 
 ing by the side of Belzoni before an Egyptian inscrip- 
 tion. How well she understood it, this little wild 
 thing as much of kin to it as the bluebells or the pine- 
 trees ! But while I looked she was gone, darting up a 
 steep path to the left, and calling me to follow. There 
 was more, then ? Yes, more. wonderful Schwarz- 
 bach Pall ! It will mean little to people who read, 
 when I say that it shoots out of a cavern in two dip- 
 
3 8 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 tinct streams ; they blend in one, which falls one hun- 
 dred and sixty feet between craggy rocks, takes a 
 cautious step or two, wading darkly under a natural 
 bridge of giant rocks and pines, and then leaps off one 
 hundred and seventy feet more in one wide torrent, 
 with veils of silver threads on each side, and a never- 
 ceasing smoke of spray. 
 
 Even destiny itself winces a little before a certain 
 sort and amount of determination. Finding me actu- 
 ally face to face with the waterfall, and as thoroughly 
 wet, the storm stayed itself a little, and rent the clouds 
 here and there for me to look off into the grand dis- 
 tances. No sunny day could have given half such de- 
 light. This fall is supposed to be an overflow from the 
 Lake Konigsee, in Bavaria; but nobody knows; it 
 hides its own secret. 
 
 Next morning we kept up a running fight with the 
 rain through the Pass Lueg, past the great gorge Oefen, 
 "not to be missed,". said Murray. Neither did we 
 miss it, clambering down and in under umbrellas. It is 
 an uncanny place, where thousands of years ago the 
 Salzach Kiver cut a road for itself through mountains 
 of rock, and never went back to see what it had left. 
 Scooped out into arched and moulded hollows, piled 
 up in bridge above bridge, damming up half the river 
 at a time and then letting it fly, there stand the giant 
 rocks to this day only half conquered. Yellow timbers 
 from the mountains were being whirled through, now 
 drawn under as if in a maelstrom, now shot swift as 
 huge arrows over ledges of slippery dark stone. 
 
 In the Pass Lueg was just room for the river and us; 
 and if it had not been for shelves of plank here and 
 there, the river would have had all the road. This 
 pass is called the " Grate of the Pongau." A very hard 
 gate to open it would be to an enemy, for the solid 
 rocky sides of the mountains have been wrought into 
 fortress walls full of embrasures, whose guns one would 
 think must be worked by elf-men in the heart of the 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTELN. 
 
 39 
 
 mountain, so little foothold seems there for human 
 gunners. 
 
 At Werfen, just beyond the pass, we struck the 
 track of the old Salzburg Archbishops again : the great 
 castle of Hohenwerfen, three hundred and fifty feet up 
 in the air, on a wooded crag overhanging the Salzach 
 River, was another of their strongholds, and was used 
 chiefly for a prison, being within easy reach of one of 
 their favorite hunting-lodges, in the Bliihnbachthal val- 
 ley, only a few hours back ; so when they were tired of 
 hunting chamois at Bliihnbachthal they could ride 
 down to Hohenwerfen and torture a few Protestants. 
 Now, a company of Austrian sportsmen owns the 
 lodge, and the castle of Hohenwerfen is used for bar- 
 racks of Austrian soldiers. 
 
 At Werfen we contracted friendship with a shoemak- 
 er, who, with his wife, three children, and three ap- 
 prentices, lives, sleeps, and sews in one stone chamber, 
 up three flights of stone ladder, a few doors from the 
 inn. I can recommend him as a good man who will 
 put a new heel to an old boot and no questions asked. 
 
 Just beyond Werfen we passed a panorama of mill 
 privilege never to be forgotten; eight tiny brown 
 wooden mills, one close above the other, on the side 
 of a hill, and the white stream leaping patiently over 
 wheel after wheel, all the way to the bottom of the 
 hill, like a circus-rider through hoops. What could 
 decide men bringing grain to be ground, whether to go 
 to the top or the bottom mill? It seemed that the 
 eighth miller up, or down, must stand a poor chance 
 of business. 
 
 From Werfen to our bedroom at Schwarzach we did 
 not cease to exclaim at the beauty of the fields and road- 
 sides. Everybody's house looked comfortable ; every- 
 body's wife was out tying up wheat or pulling flax: 
 everybody else was wearing a high hat and feather and 
 a broad gay belt, and sitting in the sun smoking; 
 though, to be just, we did see here and there an odd' 
 
4o 
 
 THE VALLEY OF GASTELN. 
 
 looking man at work. Hollyhocks ruled the gardens, — 
 superb stalking creatures, black and claret, and white, 
 and rose-pink and canary-yellow, — and all as double 
 as double could be. Crowded along the roadsides, the 
 forever half-awake bluebells nodded and nodded on 
 their wonderful necks, which are always just going to 
 break, but never do. Fields of hemp we saw, and 
 took it for a privileged weed until we were told better. 
 Linseed we saw too, in great slippery dark-blue patch- 
 es, and in the midst of all Franz suddenly reined up in 
 front of the Schwarzach Inn. 
 
 Ah, that Schwarzach landlady ! She little dreamed 
 how droll she looked as she stood pompously courtesy- 
 ing in her doorway, with her broad-brimmed black felt 
 hat jammed down over her eyebrows like a thatch. 
 Her figure was so square and puffy, it looked as if it 
 had feathers inside, and was made to be sold at a fair, 
 to stick pins in. At the crease of her waist a huge 
 bunch of keys bobbed about incessantly, never finding 
 any spot where they could lie still. Two tables full of 
 Schwarzach men with beer and pipes, and two lattice- 
 work cages of hens and cocks, we passed to go up to 
 the first floor of the inn. 
 
 0, the pride of the pincushion landlady in her feath- 
 er-beds, her linen, her blankets, her crockery! She 
 had come of the family of a Herr Somebody, though she 
 did keep an inn and serve beer to peasants. Her fam- 
 ily coat of arms hung in my bedroom, opposite a muse- 
 um in a cupboard with glass doors. The contents of 
 this museum were only to be explained on the suppo- 
 sition that they were the aggregate result of a century 
 of Christmas-tree. ISTot an article in the protective 
 tariff of the United States but had been wrought into 
 some queer shape' and put away in this Schwarzach 
 cupboard; mysteries of wax, glass, china, worsted, 
 paper, leather, bone. Most distinctly of all I remember 
 a white wax face stuck on top of an egg-shell painted 
 red, with a bit of green fringe for neck, and a bit of 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTELN. 4I 
 
 black wood for "a leg. This impish thing grinned at 
 me all night. 
 
 In this inn is a table round which the leaders of the 
 Protestant peasants met in 1729 and took a solemn 
 oath to leave the country rather than abandon their 
 new faith. If the Schwarzach valley were as cold and 
 dark then, as it was at the sundown we saw it in, I can 
 conceive of heavier sacrifices than to exchange it for 
 any possible spot in Prussia, Wiirtemberg, or North 
 America, to which, according to the G-uide-Book, the 
 thirty thousand Protestants fled. 
 
 Next day sunshine and silver tent webs all along the 
 road at eight o'clock in the morning. 
 
 A few more miles to the west, through Lend, a smut- 
 ty little village where men have been melting gold and 
 silver since the year 1538, and then we turned sharply 
 to the south, to climb up through the wild "Klamme " 
 to the valley of G-astein. At the turn we met a royal 
 messenger, the shining river Ache, which said, " G-o up 
 the road I have come. I left Gastein an hour ago." 
 
 " Less than an hour ago, we should think, stream, 
 by the rate at which you travel," said we, as we en- 
 tered the pass and began to mount slowly up. 
 
 Four horses now, and Franz is glad if we all walk. 
 What triumph for a road to keep foothold on these 
 precipices ! " Chiefly schistous limestone," whatever 
 that may be, Murray says that they are ; but they look 
 like giant strata of petrified wood. Small bits of the 
 stone lie in your hand like strips of old drift-wood and 
 crumble between your fingers almost as readily; so 
 that you glance uneasily at the walls of it, to right one 
 thousand feet above your head, and to left one thou- 
 sand feet more of walls of it, down, down to the boil- 
 ing river. If some giant were to give a stout pinch to 
 a ton or so of it while you pass, it would be bad. 
 
 " Dreadful avalanches here in spring," says Franz. 
 
 "We are glad it is August, and walk faster. The 
 larches and bluebells and thyme rock away undis- 
 
42 THE VALLEY OF G A STEIN. 
 
 turbed, however, and keep the cliffs green and bright 
 and spicy. Here is heath, too, the first we had seen, 
 fairest of lowly blossoms, with tiny pink bells in stiff 
 thick rows fringed with green needle-points of leaves : 
 it crowds the thyme out and makes its purple look dull 
 and coarse. 
 
 The Ache seemed to us a most riotous river, all 
 through the Klamme. We never dreamed that we 
 were looking at its sober middle age, and that it had 
 sown its wildest oats far up the G-astein valley. 
 
 That is probably one reason it looks so mischievous 
 all through the pass. It knows that people believe it 
 to be doing its best leaping, and it laughs as an old 
 woman who had had mad triumphs in her youth 
 might to hear herself called gay at fifty. 
 
 It was through this Klamme that the rich and haugh- 
 ty Dame Weitmoser was riding one day, when she 
 refused to give alms to an old beggar-woman who 
 stood by the roadside. 
 
 The beggar-woman cursed her to her face, saying, 
 " You shall yourself live to ask alms." 
 
 " Ha, that is impossible ; as impossible as that I 
 shall ever see this ring again," replied the wicked Frau 
 Weitmoser, drawing from her finger a diamond ring 
 and throwing it into the Ache. Then hitting the beg- 
 gar-woman across the face with her riding-whip, she 
 galloped off. 
 
 Three days later Herr Weitmoser, sitting at the head 
 of his supper-table, surrounded by a party of friends, 
 cut open a large trout and out flew his wife's diamond 
 ring and rolled across the table towards her. Very 
 pale she turned, but no one knew the reason. From 
 that day Herr Weitmoser's gold-mines began to yield 
 less and less gold, and his riches melted away, until 
 they were as poor as the poor beggar-woman who had 
 been so cruelly treated in the pass. Legends differ as 
 to the close of the story, some killing the haughty, 
 hard-hearted woman off, in season for Herr Weitmoser 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 43 
 
 to marry again and accumulate another fortune ; others 
 making her live to repent in her bitter poverty, and, 
 after she had become so kind and benevolent that she 
 shared her little freely with her fellow-poor, giving 
 back to them tenfold their original wealth. At any 
 rate, the Herr Weitmoser is buried at Hof-G-astein ; for 
 did we not see the stone emgy of him on a slab in the 
 little church ? He lies flat on his back, in puffed sleeves 
 and enormous boots, and two of his gold-miners stand 
 guarding him, one at his head and one at his feet, with 
 lifted hammers in their hands. 
 
 At the entrance of this pass, also, is the chapel of 
 Ethelinda, scene of a still wilder story, and, better than 
 all, one which is believed to be strictly true. In the 
 Hof-Grastein church is a picture of its most startling 
 incidents, and there is not a peasant within ten miles 
 of the Klamme but will tell you that on windy nights 
 can still be heard the words " Ethelinda," " Ethelinda," 
 echoing around the chapel walls. 
 
 Ethelinda was the wife of another of the rich Weit- 
 mosers, who owned the gold-mines in the Eadhaus- 
 berg. Men are alike in all centuries. When Ethelinda 
 died, Ethelinda's husband shed fewer tears than did 
 another of the Weitmosers, Christopher by name, who 
 had loved Ethelinda long and hopelessly. This lover 
 hid himself in the chapel while the funeral rites were 
 being performed. At midnight he went down into the 
 vault where Ethelinda's body had been placed. A ter- 
 rible thunder-storm made the fearful place still more 
 fearful. By light of the sharp flashes he saw the face of 
 the woman he loved. He bent over to kiss her. As he 
 pressed his lips to hers she sighed, opened her eyes, 
 and said, " Where am I ? " But before either of them 
 could comprehend the terror and ecstasy of the mo- 
 ment, Ethelinda exclaimed, " fly, fly for help ! The 
 pains of childbirth are upon me ! Hasten, or it will 
 be too late ! " 
 
 The lover forgets all danger to himself in his anguish 
 
44 
 
 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 of fear for her, and bursts breathless into the husband's 
 presence with the incredible news that his buried wife 
 is alive, and lying in travail in her coffin, in the chapel. 
 Weitmoser's first impulse is to slay the man whose tale 
 so plainly reveals him as lover of Ethelinda. But he 
 thinks better of it, and, hand in hand, they hurry to 
 the chapel. Angels have been before them, and suc- 
 cored the mother and child. They find Ethelinda 
 kneeling on the altar steps, with her babe in her arms. 
 History wisely forbore to encumber the narrative with 
 any details of how embarrassing it was for them all to 
 live in the same village after this ; but in the same lit- 
 tle churoh of Hof-Gastein, where is the picture of 
 Ethelinda in her graveclothes, kneeling on the altar 
 steps holding up her child to the Virgin, are the grave- 
 stones of Christopher Weitmoser and his wife and 
 children, from which we can understand that time had 
 the same excellent knack then, as now, of curing that 
 sort of wound. 
 
 The G-astein valley reveals itself cautiously by instal- 
 ments, being in three plateaus. Coming out on the 
 first, and seeing a little hamlet brooding over green 
 meadows before us, we exclaimed, " G-astein, G-as- 
 tein ! " 
 
 " ]STo, indeed," said Franz, contemptuously, " only 
 Dorf G-astein." 
 
 We wondered and were silent. Miles farther on, 
 another sharp ascent and another valley. " Surely this 
 is Gastein ? " 
 
 " JSTo, no, only Hof-Gastein." "We wondered still 
 more, but were glad, because Hof-Gastein is white and 
 dusty and glaring. The houses elbow each other and 
 are hideous, and the Ache takes a nap in the marshy 
 meadows. 
 
 Steadily we climbed on ; one mile, two miles, three 
 miles, up hill. Snow mountains came into view. The 
 Ache began to caper and tumble. Cold air blew in our 
 faces; this was the noon weather of Gastein. Pink 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 45 
 
 heath bordered the road ; bushes of it, mats of it ; i( 
 seemed a sin to scatter so much of anything so lovely. 
 Dark fir woods stretched and met over our heads , 
 gleams of houses came through. 
 
 " Yes, this is G-astein," said Franz, with proud em-, 
 phasis, which meant, " JSTow you will see what it is to 
 mistake any other place for Gastein." 
 
 Sure enough, wise old proverb : " There is but one 
 G-astein." 
 
 For, knows the world any other green and snow- 
 circled village which holds a waterfall three hundred 
 feet high in its centre ? One hesitates at first whether 
 to say the waterfall is in the town, or the town in 
 the waterfall, so inextricably mixed up are they; so 
 noisy is the waterfall and so still is the town. Some 
 of the houses hang over the waterfall ; some of the 
 threads of the waterfall wriggle into the gardens. The 
 longer you stay the more you feel that the waterfall is 
 somehow at the bottom of everything. From one side 
 to other of this valley an arrow might easily fly. Both 
 walls are green almost to the very top with pastures 
 and fir woods, and dotted with little brown houses, 
 which look as if birds had taken to building walled 
 nests on the ground and roofing them over. To the 
 west the wall is an unbroken line. Behind it the sun 
 drops early in the afternoon like a plummet. Sunset 
 in Gastein is no affair of the almanac. Every point 
 has its own calendar. Long after Gastein — or Bad- 
 Gastein, as we ought to begin to call it — is hi shadow, 
 Hof-Gastein, in the open meadow three miles below, 
 is yellow with the sun. To the east and south are 
 more mountains and higher, but not in range with 
 each other, — the Stiihle, the Raclhausberg, Ankogel, 
 and Gamskarkogel, all between six and twelve thou- 
 sand feet high. Thus the view from the west side of 
 the valley has far more beauty and variety. There 
 are now on this side only a few houses, but ultimately 
 it must be Gastein's West End. 
 
46 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 The geologists, who know, say that whers now are 
 the valleys of Grastein and Bockstein were once two 
 great lakes, which the earth in a spasm of thirst some 
 day gulped down at a swallow ; all but the water of 
 the perverse river Ache, which would not be swal- 
 lowed. When the cold water went in, some of the 
 pent-up hot water jumped at the chance of getting out: 
 hence the famous hot springs, great marvel and bless- 
 ing of Gastein. 
 
 There are eighteen of these hot springs, some trick- 
 ling slowly from the rocks, some bubbling out in the 
 very midst of the cold water of the cascade. They 
 make the best of their loopholes of escape, coming into 
 town at the rate of one hundred and thirty-two thou- 
 sand cubic feet every twenty-four hours. The water is 
 perfectly colorless and tasteless ; yet the list of sulphates 
 and chlorides, etc., of which it is made, is a long one, 
 numbering nine in all. The recipe is an old one, and 
 probably good, though it sounds formidable. 
 
 The legend of its discovery is, that in the year 680 
 three hunters, following a wounded stag, found him 
 bathing his wounds in one of these hot springs, whose 
 vapor attracted their attention. A little later the Ro- 
 mans, seeking after gold and silver, penetrated to the 
 valley and found living there two holy men named 
 Primus and Felicianus. This was in the days of Ru- 
 pert, the first of the Salzburg Archbishops. Primus 
 and Felicianus were carried prisoners to Rome and 
 thrown to the' lions in the Coliseum. But they still 
 live as the Patron Saints of Grastein. All good Catho- 
 lics coming to be cured of disease, — and most who 
 come are good Catholics, — invoke the prayers of Saints 
 Primus and Felicianus, and, when they go away, leave 
 grateful record in the chronicles of Grastein, beginning : 
 " To G-od and the Saints Primus and Felicianus be 
 thanks." 
 
 The Salzburg Archbishops kept possession of the 
 valley until late in the seventeenth century. Then it 
 
THE VALLEY OF G A STEIN. 4 y 
 
 went through half a century of political and religious 
 warfares, passing from the Archbishops to other rulers, 
 then to Bavaria, and finally to Austria, which still holds 
 it. There is an Austrian commandant at St. Johann 
 an Austrian judge at Hof-Gastein, and at Bad-Gastein 
 an Austrian bath inspector and government commis- 
 sioner. 
 
 But still the church holds sway. There is a Roman 
 Catholic curate in every village, a magnificent Catholic 
 church going up in the very centre of Bad-Gastein, and 
 nobody can stay two days in the town without being 
 visited by the sweet-voiced Sisters of Charity in black, 
 who ask, and are sure to get, alms for the poor in the 
 name of Primus and Felicianus. 
 
 Life in Gastein begins bewilderingly for the newly 
 arrived. How it began with us I would not dare to 
 tell. It would be foolish to throw away one's reputa- 
 tion for veracity on the single stake of an utterly in- 
 credible statement as to the number of beds one had 
 slept in in forty-eight hours. But not the most expe- 
 rienced and cautious traveller in the world can be sure 
 of escaping an experience like ours. He will have 
 telegraphed beforehand for rooms, having read in his 
 Murray that Wildbad-Gastein in August is so crowded 
 with the nobility of Russia, Germany, and Austria that 
 it is not safe to go there without this precaution. As 
 he steps out of his carriage in front of Straubinger's 
 Hotel, Gustav, the pompous head-waiter, will wave 
 him back, and explain with much flourish that there is 
 not so much as one square inch of unoccupied room 
 under Straubinger's roof, but that he can have for one 
 day a room in the great stone Schloss opposite. At 
 
 end of that day Lord A is coming to take the 
 
 apartment for a month. By that time Count B 
 
 will have vacated another, Gustav does not remember 
 exactly where, but he can have it for a few hours ; and 
 then when the Prince, or Duke, or Herr, who has 
 claims on that at a fixed minute, arrives, he can move 
 
4 8 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIAT. 
 
 to another which will be sure to be vacant ; or if it is 
 not, he can go to sleep at Bockstein, four miles farther 
 up the valley, or at Hof-Gastein. three miles farther 
 down. 
 
 There can be nothing on earth like the problem of 
 lodging at Bad-Gastein in August, except jumping for 
 life from cake to cake of ice in the Polar Sea. It is very 
 exciting and amusing for a time, if the cakes are not 
 too far apart. In the mean time, you eat your break- 
 fast on the cake where you have slept, your dinner on 
 the road to the next one, and your tea when you get 
 there. Very good are the breakfasts and teas in all 
 these lodging-houses, served by smiling, white-aproned 
 housekeepers, who kiss your hand in token of alle- 
 giance, and bring you roses and forget-me-nots on your 
 name day, if they happen to find out what it is. G-ood 
 butter, milk, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, figs, 
 tomatoes, grapes, pears, plums, eggs, — all these you 
 can have for the asking ; bread which is white and fine, 
 and which they think delicious who have not com- 
 muned with Liebig and learned to ask for the good, 
 nutritious bran. But with the milk and the fruit, and 
 now and then a resolute pull at the native black bread, 
 anise-seed and all, one can breakfast and tea happily. 
 But when you ask for dinner, the face of nature changes. 
 The thing called dinner you can eat at a table d'hote 
 in the hotels, or in a cafe, or you can have it sent 
 to you at your lodgings, in a slippery tower of small 
 white china tubs, which, when they are ranged round 
 you on your table, make you think of a buttery wash- 
 ing-day. What may be in these tubs, Heaven forbid 
 that I should try to describe. Who lives to dine world 
 better not go to Gastein ; in fact, who cannot get ak,ng 
 without dining would better stay away. He who is 
 wise will fight clear of the hotels and cafes, make inter- 
 est with his landlady to give him a sort of picnic lunch 
 at noonday, and postpone ideas of dinner till he returns 
 to that paradise among hotels, the Europa at Salzburg. 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 4 g 
 
 These hearty, strong, tireless Germans, who climb a 
 mountain or two of a morning for summer pleasure, 
 find it nowise unsatisfactory to stop anywhere on the 
 road, and eat anything for dinner. They do it as nat- 
 urally as goats nibble a living from one rock to-day 
 and another to-morrow. They are better off than we 
 in being so much less wedded to routine ; but it is a 
 freedom not easy to acquire. For the average Ameri- 
 can to sleep in one house, breakfast in a second, dine in 
 a third, tea in a fourth, and sleep again in a fifth, seems 
 to turn life into a perpetual passover, not to be endured 
 many weeks at a time. 
 
 Having made sure of a breakfast, and that Lord A, 
 B, or C will not require your apartment before noon, 
 you go out to look G-astein in the face, hear the sound 
 and feel the heat of its wonderful waters. 
 
 Water to right, water to left, cold water, warm 
 water, hot water, water trickling from rocks, water 
 running from spouts, water boiling out of sight and 
 sending up steam, and in and around and above and 
 beyond everything the great waterfall thundering down 
 its three hundred feet, deafening you with noise how- 
 ever far you go, and drenching you with gpray if you 
 come near. 
 
 " 0, which water is for what disease ? " we exclaim, 
 curious to taste of all, afraid to taste of any, remember- 
 ing Hahnemann, whom we revere. 
 
 " G-o to Dr. Proll," says everybody. " He is the 
 man to tell you all about G-astein. He knows it thor- 
 oughly." 
 
 Indeed he does. He may be said to have G-astein 
 by heart. 
 
 Between nine and eleven in the mornings there is a 
 chance of finding Dr. Proll at his tiny, odd, three- 
 roomed office, which is composed of equal parts of bare 
 rock and vapor-bath. At all other hours of the day 
 they who wish to see him must watch and waylay him 
 as sportsmen do game. Each man you ask will have 
 
 3 D 
 
5o 
 
 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 .seen him just the minute before, running rapidly up or 
 down some hill, but you will be wise not to attempt 
 overtaking him. 
 
 Dr. Proll is a man whom it belongs to Yictor Hugo 
 to describe. Words less subtile than his cannot draw 
 the lines of a nature at once so electric, so simple, so 
 pure, so wise, so enthusiastic, so gentle, so childlike, so 
 strong. Reverently I ask his pardon for saying, even 
 at this distance, this much. 
 
 On the table in the room where Dr. Proll receives 
 his patients stands a dingy little apparatus at sight of 
 which one idly wonders, — a magnetic needle swinging 
 by pink floss silk under a low oval clock-case of glass,' 
 a small electrical battery, and a red glass vessel half 
 full of water. These are the silent but eloquent wit- 
 nesses which tell the secret of the naiad of G-astein. 
 The -doctor's blue eyes sparkle with eagerness as he 
 immerses the battery in the water from the hot spring, 
 and, connecting the wires with the electrometer, 
 watches to see the needle move. He has done this 
 perhaps thousands of times, but the thousandth time 
 and the first are alike to all true lovers of science, — to 
 all true lovers in the world, for that matter. 
 
 " You see ? you see ? " he exclaims. 
 
 Yes, we see that the needle swings fifty degrees. 
 The temperature of the water was 14° Reaumur. Then 
 he puts the battery into distilled water of the same 
 temperature; the needle swings but twenty degrees, 
 into common well-water, same temperature, and it 
 swings but fifteen. 
 
 " Now I will to you show that the G-astein water is 
 the only thing in this world over which time has no 
 power," says Dr. Proll, filling the red glass vessel from 
 another bottle. " This is hot spring water, one year 
 old. It would be the same if it were one hundred 
 years old. Look ! " 
 
 Yes, the needle swings fifty degrees. 
 
 " And now remains the most wonderful experiment 
 
THE VALLEY OF GA STEIN. 51 
 
 of all. I will show you how a very little of this magi- 
 cal water can electrify other water, just as one electric 
 soul can electrify hundreds of commoner natures." 
 
 We smile at this. It is not possible in the first mo- 
 ment to be lifted quite to the heights of Dr. Proll's 
 enthusiasm. But wait ! Here is the battery in com- 
 mon boiled water, temperature 26° Keaumur. The nee- 
 dle moves sluggishly, barely ten degrees. 
 
 "You see? you see? we will repeat; all experi- 
 ments should be twice." 
 
 Yes, the needle moves barely ten degrees. 
 
 " Now we will turn in an equal quantity of hot spring 
 water two years old, temperature the same. Look! 
 look ! " exclaims the doctor, clasping his hands in the 
 delight of the true experimenter. 
 
 Sure enough. The heavy boiled water is electrified 
 into new life. The needle swings forty degrees ! 
 
 " And this is why I say that the water of G-astein is 
 the water for souls," continues the doctor, lifting out 
 the battery with unconscious lovingness in his touch ; 
 " And this is why I say in my book on G-astein, that 
 these baths are the baths of eternal youth ; and this is 
 why an old physician, more than a hundred years ago, 
 wrote a little poem, in which he makes the naiad of 
 G-astein say to the invalids, 
 
 "If I cannot please all 
 And cannot bring health to all, 
 That is common to me and God. 
 Where there lingers in the blood 
 The poison of sin and passion in the soul, 
 There can enter neither God nor I." 
 
 One is a little sobered by all this. It is nearer to the 
 air of miracles than we commonly come. Under the 
 impressive silent pointing of this magnetic needle-fin- 
 ger, we listened with grave faith to the account of the 
 effect of these waters on wilted flowers. This is a curi- 
 ous experiment, often tried. Flowers which are to all 
 appearance dead, if they are left for three days in this 
 
52 
 
 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 warm water hold up their heads, regain shape, color, 
 fragrance, and live for several days more. ISTo won- 
 der that old madman Paracelsus thought he had dis- 
 covered in the Gastein waters the elixir of life. No 
 wonder that to-day the sweet wild paths of G-astein 
 are crowded with old men seeking to be made young, 
 or, at least, to be saved from growing older. 
 
 "It is a strange thing, though," says dear, true- 
 hearted Dr. Proll, — " it is a strange thing, but in all 
 these twenty years never has one woman come to me 
 to be made young. Every year come many men, 
 praying that they may not grow old; but never yet, 
 one woman." 
 
 Ah, we thought, perhaps the women are less honest 
 than the men, and do not tell their motives. 
 
 But there is not time to grow very superstitious over 
 these tales of magic, for there is so much else to be 
 seen. In the rear room of the office is the hot-vapor 
 bath; through a hole in the floor up comes the hot 
 steam, heated no human being can tell how far down 
 in the heart of the earth ; night and day the fires go ; 
 for twelve hundred years the bath has been standing 
 ready to steam people. Over the hole in the floor is a 
 mysterious wooden structure, looking like a combina- 
 tion of pillory and threshing-machine. In five minutes, 
 the doctor has shown, by a series of slippings and fit- 
 tings and joinings, how, for every possible disease, every 
 mentionable part of the body can be separately steamed, 
 inch by inch, till one is cooked well. He wound up 
 with imploring me to put my ear to the end of a long, 
 narrow, wooden pipe which he screwed on the appa- 
 ratus. " This is sure cure for deafness," he said. 
 
 I leaped. I should think it might be. In that sec- 
 ond I had heard scouring through my brain all sorts of 
 noises from spheres unknown. The ear-trumpet, which 
 Hood's old woman bought, and, " the very next day, 
 heard from her husband at Botany Bay," was nothing 
 to it. The doctor could not understand why I should 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTELN. 
 
 53 
 
 shrink so from listening to this wild rush of scalding 
 steam from the earth's middle. He would have been 
 shocked to know that, to my inexperience, it seemed 
 nothing less than a speaking-tube from the infernal 
 regions. 
 
 But we went nearer yet to the central fires. Up, 
 up a winding path, shaded and made sweet like all 
 G-astein's paths by fir-trees, mosses and heath, and 
 bluebells ; and there, sunk in the -solid rock, was a pol- 
 ished iron gate. A peasant-woman keeps the key of 
 this, and gets a little daily bread by opening it for 
 strangers. She brought suits of stout twilled cloth for 
 us to wear ; but we declined them, having learned in 
 the salt-mines of Hallein that, the inside of the earth 
 being much cleaner than the outside, it is all nonsense 
 to take such precautions about going in. A poor sick 
 man who was painfully sitting still on a bench near 
 the gate, seeing our preparations, came up and asked to 
 join our party. I fancied that he had a desire to get a 
 little nearer to the head-quarters of cure, and reassure 
 himself by a sight of the miraculous spring. The peas- 
 ant-woman went on before, carrying a small lantern, 
 which twinkled like a very little good deed in the 
 worst of worlds. The passage was very narrow and 
 low. Overhead were stalactites of yellow and white ; 
 the walls dripped ceaselessly ; the path was stony and 
 wet. Hotter and hotter it grew as we went on. How 
 much farther could we afford to go, at such geometri- 
 cal ratio of heat ? we were just beginning to ask, when 
 the woman turned and, setting down her lantern, 
 pointed to the spring. It was a very small stream, 
 running out of the rock above her head fast enough to 
 fill a cup in a very few seconds, and almost boiling hot. 
 We all put our fingers solemnly in and solemnly put 
 them to our lips ; the woman nodded and said, " Good, 
 good " ; crossing herself, I suppose in the name of the 
 good Saints Primus and Felicianus, she led the way 
 out. I felt like crossing myself too. High-temperature 
 
54 
 
 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 underground places are singularly uncanny, and give 
 one respect for the old mythology's calculation of the 
 meridian of Tartarus. 
 
 For rainy days — and those are, must we own it ? 
 seventeen out of every thirty in Gastein — there is a 
 most curious provision in the shape of a long glass gal- 
 lery, four hundred and fifty feet long and twelve wide. 
 Here the noble invalidism and untitled health and cu- 
 riosity may walk, read, smoke, eat, trade, and sleep 
 too, for aught I know. It is the oddest of places ; so 
 many hundred feet of conservatory, with all sorts of 
 human plants leaning against its sides, in tilted chairs ; 
 I never grew weary of walking through it, or flattening 
 my nose against its panes just behind the aristocratic 
 shoulders of his Highness the Grand Chamberlain of 
 
 , as he sat reading some court journal or other. A 
 
 little room at the end holds a piano and two tables 
 covered with a species of literature which was new to 
 me, but which all Gastein seemed to feed and subsist 
 on, that is, the lists of all the visitors at all the baths 
 and watering-places in Europe. Pamphlet after pam- 
 phlet, they arrived every few days, corrected and 
 annotated with care, the silliest and most meaning- 
 less census which could be imagined. But eager 
 women came early to secure first reading of them, 
 and other women with eyes fixed on the fortunate 
 possessor of the valuable news sat waiting for their 
 turn to come. This room is exclusively for women ; 
 opening out of it, in continuation of satire on their 
 probable requirements, is a confectioner's shop ; next 
 comes the general reading-room, where are all the con- 
 tinental journals of importance ; next a long, empty 
 room for promenading, where your only hindrance will 
 be the appealing looks from venders of fancy wares,- 
 who have their glass cases in a row on one side ; then 
 comes the covered walk, also four fifths glass, on the 
 bridge over the waterfall ; and then comes the Strau- 
 binger Platz, the smallest, busiest, noisiest, most pom- 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTELN. 
 
 55 
 
 pous little Platz in the world; one side hotel, three 
 sides lodging-house, and all sides waterfall ; lodgers 
 and loungers incessantly walking to and fro, or sitting 
 on benches taking coffee, and staring listlessly at other 
 lodgers and loungers ; booths of fruit ; booths of photo- 
 graphs ; booths of flowers; booths of shoes; booths of 
 inconceivable odds and ends, which nobody thought of 
 wanting before they came in, but which everybody 
 will buy before they go out, and will wish they had 
 not when they come to pack ; here, every day, come 
 bare-kneed hunters, bringing warm, dead chamois slung 
 on their shoulders ; black and yellow Eilwagens drive 
 up with postilions in salmon and blue, wearing big 
 
 brass horns at their sides ; Madame the Countess , 
 
 dressed with blue silk trimmed with point lace, sits un- 
 der a white fringed sunshade, on a chair in front of 
 
 Straubinger's Hotel ; and Madame the Frau sits, 
 
 barefooted, bareheaded, opposite her, selling strawber- 
 ries at eight kreutzers a tumblerful, and knitting away 
 for dear life on a woollen stocking ; all this and much 
 more in a little square which can be crossed in ten 
 steps. It is like a play; once seated, you sit on and 
 on, unconsciously waiting for the curtain to fall: on 
 your right hand is the orchestra, ten pieces, who play 
 wild Tyrolese airs very well, and add much to the dra- 
 matic effect of things. Sunset is the curtain for this 
 theatre, and dinner the only enter 1 acte. The instant 
 the sun drops, the players scatter, the booths fold up ; 
 Madame the Countess sweeps off into the hotel ; Ma- 
 dame the Frau rolls up her knitting, cautiously mixes 
 together her fresh and her old strawberries, and starts 
 off brave and strong to mount to her chamber in the 
 air, miles up on some hill. 
 
 This play grows wearying to watch sooner than one 
 would suppose. After a few days, one finds that all 
 the climbing roads and paths lead to better things. 
 There are the Schiller-Hohe, the Cafe Vergissmeinnicht, 
 the Kaiser Friedrichs Laube (whore the Emperor Fred- 
 
56 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIJV. 
 
 erick III. took baths four centuries ago; ; the Pyrker- 
 Hohe, named after the patriarch of Erlau, the poet 
 Pyrker ; the Rudolfs-Hohe, the Windischgratz-Hohe, 
 and many mpre cafes or summer-houses on shining 
 heights, all of which give new views of the wonderful 
 G-astein valley, and at all of which whoever is G-erman 
 eats and drinks. The lure of a table, a chair, and a 
 beer-mug seems a small reward to hold out, when for 
 every additional mile that is walked a new world opens 
 to the eye, but the Germans see better through smoke 
 and beer-colored glasses. 
 
 Strong adventurous people, who can walk and climb 
 without reckoning distances by aching muscles, have 
 unending delights set before them for every day in 
 G-astein. 
 
 In the Kolshachthal are four thousand chamois. 
 Every summer come royal hunting parties to Hof-Gas- 
 tein, and they who follow them may see chamois fly- 
 ing for their lives ; poor things, so helpless in spite of 
 all their marvellous speed and spring. 
 
 Then there is the lofty plateau of ISTassfeld, the old 
 " Wet Field " mentioned in Roman history. From 
 this can be seen a great amphitheatre of glaciers and 
 the passage by the Malnitzer-Tauern into Carinthia : 
 this dangerous pass has an ineffable charm, from the 
 fact that it is one of the only two ways out of the smil- 
 ing Gastein valley. Once in, should any chance de- 
 stroy the road in that wild Klamme through which the 
 fierce Ache goes and you came, you have no possible 
 way of escape, except on jbot or on horseback, by the 
 Malnitzer-Tauern. 
 
 After the Nassfeld come the old gold-mines in the 
 Radhausberg, where the old Weitmosers made and lost 
 their fortunes, and every stone has its legend: the 
 Bockhardt Mountain, with a poisoned lake in which 
 no fish can swim, near which no bird can fly and no 
 flower can grow; the valley Anlaufthal, on one side 
 of which rises the royal hill Ankogel, eleven thousand 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTE1N. 
 
 57 
 
 feet high, and called the Eldorado of mineralogists; 
 and last, because greatest, the snow-topped mountain 
 G-amskarkogel, The Righi of Austria, which looks down 
 upon more than one hundred glaciers. 
 
 All this and more for well people. As for sick peo- 
 ple their tale is soon told, either here or elsewhere. 
 Hood's definition of medicine was exhaustive. In 
 Gastein, however, little is done with spoons ; people 
 go into their medicine, instead of its going into them. 
 Nobody takes but one bath a day; the stronger inva- 
 lids take it in the morning before breakfast, and are 
 allowed to go their ways for the rest of the day. The 
 weaker ones take it at ten o'clock in the forenoon, lie 
 in bed for an hour after it, then eat dinner, then are 
 commanded to dawdle gently about out of doors until 
 one hour before sunset, after which they are, upon no 
 excuse whatever, to leave the house. There are they 
 who drink mineral waters from Bockstein, drink whey, 
 drink goats' milk, eat grapes, eat figs, all for cure. They 
 all look tired of being ill ; and they all give a semi- 
 professional and inquisitive stare at each new-comer, 
 as if they were thinking, " Ha, he looks as if he had it 
 worse than I ! " Poor souls. It seems a considerable 
 price to pay for the rush-candle, to keep it burning un- 
 der such difficulties and restrictions. 
 
 In a little pamphlet written by Dr. Proll upon G-as- 
 tein are some explicit directions as to the proper course 
 to be pursued by all invalids who hope to be cured by 
 the G-astein waters. Reading them over, one smiles, 
 quietly, wondering if careful following out of such di- 
 rections would not be of itself sufficient cure for most 
 ailments. 
 
 "Before arriving at G-astein, visit all such places, 
 cities, mountains, mines, as you would wish to see. 
 
 " Also close up all your most annoying or engrossing 
 business affairs." 
 
 Among the " leading conditions of success in the use 
 of the baths," he enumerates, 
 3* 
 
58 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 " A cheerful, amiable, and contented disposition," 
 and 
 
 " Implicit obedience to the physician " ; and adds 
 that, after the treatment, there must be, during a pe- 
 riod of from three to twelve weeks, 
 
 " Mental tranquillity. 
 
 " No business nor bodily fatigue. 
 
 " No long walks nor climbings. 
 
 "No remedials, internal nor external; a tepid bath 
 once a week, but no other bath ! " 
 
 But from the days of the Archbishops until now, it 
 seems to have been held especially incumbent on all 
 persons coming to these baths for help to come with 
 quiet souls and pure consciences. The first volume of 
 the " Chronicles of Gastein " is black and battered and 
 yellow as an old monkish missal. More than half of 
 the writing is entirely illegible ; but clear and distinct 
 on its first page stands out the motto, written there in 
 1681, and copied, I believe from the bath of some Ro- 
 man Emperor, — 
 
 " Curarum vacuus hunc adeas locum 
 Ut morborum vacuum abire queas 
 Non enim curatur qui curat." 
 
 Which good advice freely translated, would be some- 
 thing like this, " Whoever comes here to be cured must 
 leave his cares at home ; for if he worries he will never 
 get well." 
 
 These " Chronicles of G-astein " are a never-failing 
 source of amusement. There are fifteen volumes of 
 them, written by the invalids themselves, from 1680 
 until now. The records are written in old Latin, old 
 German, old French, all more or less illegible, so that 
 there is endless interest in groping among them on the 
 thousandth chance of finding something that can be 
 deciphered. The books are carefully kept at the cure's 
 house, and the volume for 1869 is quite a grand affair, 
 having a mysterious locked brass box in one of the 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 59 
 
 covers. This is to receive the contributions of charita- 
 ble people who are not sick, and of sick people who 
 are superstitious and wish to propitiate the good Saints 
 Primus and Felicianus. 
 
 The box has the following inscription : — 
 
 " For the support of the school, and of the poor of 
 both churches of the holy Primus and Felicianus, and 
 the holy Nicholas church at 
 
 Wildbad-G-astein. 
 
 In order that the Almighty Grod may bless, by the 
 prayers of those holy patrons of the Bath, the noble 
 gift of the health-giving spring to all the patients." 
 
 There are many most curious entries in these chron- 
 icles, and no one can look through them without being 
 impressed by the singular unanimity of testimony, 
 during two hundred years, to the efficacy of the 
 waters. Here and there, however, a discontented soul 
 has written out his grumblings ; as, for instance, one 
 Count Maximilian Joseph, Chamberlain of the King of 
 Bavaria, who wrote on the 4th of July, 1747, in very 
 cramped and crabbed old French : " Reader, greeting ! 
 May G-od preserve you from the four elements of this 
 country which are all equally wonderful, even the en- 
 nui " ; and an unknown grumbler of the English na- 
 tion, one hundred and five years later, who was too 
 courteous or too politic to sign his name to this coup- 
 let, — 
 
 " Drenched with fountain, bath, and rain, 
 God knows if I 've been drenched in vain." 
 
 In 1732 Ludovic Frierfund wrote : " The fourth of 
 July I began to use these baths. Now I am so much 
 better, I believe I shall regain my health." (15th 
 July.) 
 
 A few days later the grateful Baroness Anna Sophia, 
 of Gera, writes : "To G-od and the two patron saints 
 
60 THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 
 
 Primus and Felicianus shall be the greatest thanks that 
 I have used for the second time these blessed baths." 
 
 In 1752 the Countess Anna Maria Barbara Christia- 
 na, of Ronigs, declared : " I have finished this cure 
 with the aid of G-od, and the Holy Mother, and the 
 two saints Primus and Felicianus, and depart in full 
 health on the 17th of July." 
 
 In 1830 Babette Brandhuber, may her soul rest in 
 peace ! left on one of the pages of the chronicle a little 
 German verse, of which this is almost a literal transla- 
 tion : — 
 
 " holy spring and friendly vale, 
 I came here full of pain ! 
 My full heart writes this grateful tale, 
 I leave thee well again." 
 
 I am sorry to say that there have been in G-astein 
 two or three Americans and English less poetically 
 gifted than Babette, who have filled several pages of 
 this volume with rhymes for which one blushes. 
 
 The two best things I found were a little record of 
 one " Ruf, a money-changer of Munich," who, proba- 
 bly in a half-defiant display of his unpoetical calling, 
 left only that signature to this couplet : — 
 
 " TO THE NAIAD OF GASTEIN. 
 
 "A kiss from woman's lips brings luck: 
 I kissed thee and am well." 
 
 And the following French verses. The author's name 
 seems to have been purposely written so that no 
 human being can decipher it, though the date is so 
 recent. But the handwriting is evidently that of a 
 woman : — 
 
 " AUX BAIGNEURS. 
 
 " Savez-vous qu'et est a Gastein 
 
 Ou vous baignez pleins d'esperance ? 
 Mes chers amis, j'en suis certain 
 C'est la fontaine de jouvence. 
 
THE VALLEY OF GASTEIN. 6 1 
 
 " Dans ses eaux jettez une fleur, 
 Rose depuis long temps fl^trie ; 
 Bientot fraicheur, parfum, couleur 
 A la rose rendront la vie. 
 
 " Ainsi puis qu'on peut y gagner 
 De quoi prolonger l'existence; 
 Amis, venez souvent baigner 
 A la fontaine de jouvence." 
 
 (20th July, 1820.) 
 
 Half a century ago ! Youth and hope are over for 
 her by this time ; though perhaps youth and hope are 
 just beginning for her by this time, — the true youth, 
 the immortal hope ; but whether she be to-day old on 
 earth or young in heaven, I fancy her all the same, 
 cherishing in her heart the memory of the rare, beau- 
 tiful, blessed, dear G-astein valley. 
 
 Gastuna tantum una I 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS AND THE HOUSE 
 OF THE STAR OF GOLD. 
 
 OUR month's voyage of Venice had come to an 
 end. We had said so many times to each other 
 in the mornings, " We must go," that the meaningless 
 declaration had come to be received with bursts of 
 laughter, and nobody dared say it any more. Never- 
 theless it was true : people who meant to summer in the 
 Tyrol must not spend the whole of June in Venice. 
 Silent, sad, beautiful Venice, how did our eyes cling to 
 thy spires, as looking backward from the railway car- 
 riage we saw them slowly go down in the pale water. 
 That one can leave Venice by rail seems the most in- 
 credible thing in life. At the first turn of the wheels 
 and snort of the engine we beg*an to doubt whether 
 the city had been real ; the first sight of green land 
 was bewildering ; and when at the first station we saw 
 wheeled carriages waiting for people, we were struck 
 dumb. What a gigantic and agile creature did the 
 horse appear f and what a marvel of beautiful solidity 
 the level earth, brown under foot, and full of locust 
 hedges and pink-blossomed trees! It is no small proof 
 of the subtile spell of that wonderful city of water and 
 stone, slowly sinking at anchor, that one month's life 
 on its bosom is enough to make all other living seem 
 unnatural. 
 
 We even felt dull misgivings about the Tyrol, and 
 the dolomite mountains of the grand Ampezzo Pass 
 through which we were to pass to reach it. Never- 
 theless, " Ampezzo Pass " was so stamped upon our 
 whole bearing, that, as soon as we stepped out of the 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 63 
 
 carriage at Conegliano, we were taken possession of by 
 screaming vetturini, each man of whom possessed the 
 very best carriage and the very best horses, and was 
 himself the very best guide in Conegliano! the 
 persistence, the superhuman persistence, of an Italian 
 with a hope of money ! Into the inn, into our very 
 bedchamber, followed the man who spoke loudest and 
 fastest. 
 
 Sixty francs a day ! that .was very little. The 
 ladies would not find any other man to go for so small 
 a price. And his horses ! If we could but see his 
 horses ! 
 
 How energetic grew our Italian! We would not 
 give sixty francs a day, and we wished to be alone. 
 The dilemma became embarrassing. Women, even if 
 they be American, even if they be three in number, 
 cannot put a man out of a room by main force ; but at 
 last moral force prevailed, and he went surlily away. 
 We took counsel ; it was nearly dark ; we wished to 
 begin our journey early the next morning; no doubt 
 this vetturino would inform his fellows, and they would 
 combine and agree ; but sixty franks a day was a most 
 exorbitant price for a carriage and two horses; we 
 would not pay it; we could go by rail to Inspruck, 
 and give up the Ampezzo Pass. Sadly the two who 
 knew the least Italian set forth on errand of research 
 among other vetturini. There is surprising advantage 
 sometimes in conducting such bargains in a language 
 which you do not understand. Armed with a few sim- 
 ple phrases stating time, sum, distance, and obstinately 
 reiterating them, ignorance will sometimes conquer by 
 virtue of its very incapacity. 
 
 We had barely crossed the threshold of the innj 
 when the same fierce-mouthed man sprang upon us. 
 
 " Go away. We do not want you. We will not 
 take you." 
 
 G-o away, indeed! as well dismiss our shadow! 
 Bowing, gesticulating, falling back, and then overtak- 
 
64 THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 ing, all the while talking like a macaw, he kept on all 
 sides of us, that man of Conegliano. At last he sur- 
 rendered. That is, he said meekly, " What will the 
 ladies give?" 
 
 The moment he said that, we knew the day was 
 ours. Now came my hour of success. I glibly said 
 my lesson, " Forty francs a day. No more! " 
 
 A voluble reply ten minutes long, with heart-rend- 
 ing gestures. 
 
 " I do not understand Italian. Forty francs a day. 
 No more." 
 
 Fifteen minutes more of volubility, appealing gri- 
 mace, and gesture. 
 
 " I do not understand one word ! Forty francs a day. 
 No more ! " 
 
 Our man fell. He would go for forty francs a day, 
 this father of a family who had assured us with stream- 
 ing eyes that his children would die of hunger if he 
 went for less than sixty ! 
 
 Once having accepted our terms, he was abjectly our 
 servant. 
 
 " Show us your horses ! " Meekly he led the way 
 to his stables. With as knowing look as we could as- 
 sume we scrutinized the lean black horse and dingy 
 white horse which were walked up and down be- 
 fore us. 
 
 "0, they can trot. Yes, yes, Signora!" and lash- 
 ing them with the halter's end he ran them up and 
 down the hill at a good pace. 
 
 Triumphantly we led our conquered vassal back to 
 the hotel; the story of our victory was received in- 
 credulously by the friend whom we had left behind ; 
 and who, speaking Italian as fluently as she speaks 
 English, had vainly met the wordy extortioner on his 
 own ground with his own weapons. The contract 
 was signed ; supper and bed and night passed, and at 
 seven o'clock next morning, sunniest of Saturdays, we 
 were off. Giacomo, the driver, looked like a Barn- 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 65 
 
 stable fisherman: thin, wiry, light blue eyes, pale 
 brown hair, and scanty red whiskers. " 0, how came 
 you over here?" thought we as he jumped up and 
 took the reins. 
 
 The whole country seemed on the broad laugh. So 
 bright, so green were flower and leaf and field ; wav- 
 ing locust hedges, full of morning-glories ; and every- 
 where wide stretches of vineyards, in which the vines 
 were looped across from tree to tree, looking like an 
 array of one-legged dancers. 
 
 Lunch at Santa Croce, a town which has a lake, and 
 beech-woods and glimpses of the far-off dolomite peaks* 
 In the distance we could see a misty fringe of solid 
 green, high up in the air. It was the top of the great 
 beech forest, from which the Venice arsenal gets wood 
 for its oars and masts and gun-carriages. Ninety miles 
 in circuit is this government forest, full of game, and 
 with an isolated plateau in its centre, where the keep- 
 ers and officials live. This would not be of especial 
 moment to know, except that it is said that Titian used 
 to go there to learn how trees grow, and that he spent 
 three months in this neighborhood drawing the back- 
 ground for his " Flight into Egypt." 
 
 After lunch I walked on in advance of the carriage. 
 A man and woman who were working in a vineyard 
 on the right sent their little baby to beg of me. I do 
 not know why I remember that baby as I do no other 
 child in all Italy. She was literally a baby, certainly 
 not more than two years old ; she was beautiful, yet 
 not more beautiful than scores of Italian babies ; but 
 she was shy as a wild thrush; she absolutely could 
 not take a step towards me if she looked at me. So 
 she clasped her two little inches of hands tight over 
 her eyes, and crept on, in the middle of the dusty road, 
 more and more slowly, till at last she stood still, two 
 yards off; then taking one sly peep at me through her 
 fingers, she instantly shut them down again tighter 
 than ever and stood there, kicking up little clouds of 
 
66 THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 dust with her bare toes, the most irresistible blind beg- 
 gar I ever saw. 
 
 It is of no consequence to anybody that the name 
 of the town where we slept that night was Longarone. 
 If only journeys could be told and the names of towns 
 left out, how marvellously improved stories of travel 
 would be. But whoever sleeps at Longarone will 
 remember it always, the dark, frightened, poverty- 
 stricken looking little town which huddles in such bare 
 hollows of mountain and rock. The dismal inn, also, 
 they will never forget : rooms so huge that lights can-, 
 not light them ; two stalking high beds in every bed- 
 room ; and on the mouldy walls of the great dining- 
 room ghastly pictures of Bible characters in giant size, — 
 the Queen of Sheba leading up to Solomon, on his throne, 
 a procession of black boys loaded down with pumpkin- 
 shaped jewels ; Samson with his head in the lap of 
 Delilah, who brandishes aloft at least two pounds of 
 coarse black hair ; and Pharaoh's daughter receiving 
 Moses in a knife-tray, while his mother stands in full 
 sight knee-deep in water on the opposite side of the 
 river. 
 
 The Ampezzo road, just beyond Longarone, enters 
 the country of Cadore, the country of Titian. No 
 wonder they were strong in fight, the Cadorini, and 
 loyal of soul. To be born in such mountain fastnesses, 
 to climb such precipices, to breathe such air, and to see 
 such flowers, at once, could not fail to make souls both 
 strong and sweet. 
 
 A strange hopelessness almost holds me back from 
 the attempt to speak of that day's journey through the 
 Ampezzo Pass : they who have not seen it will not 
 believe; they who have seen it will smile that one 
 should try to put such shapes in words. Possibly 
 geologists can tell what a dolomite mountain is ; how 
 and why it is so seamed, so jagged, so wrought into 
 castle and battlement and obelisk and cathedral-front; 
 beautiful and terrible and graceful and grotesque ; by 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. fa 
 
 turns, all at once; in sunlight, in shadow, at noon, at 
 night; shifting and changing tint with every breath 
 of wind or cloud on its surfaces: but to common men's 
 eyes, these dolomite ranges are as unlike all other 
 mountain forms as is Cellini's carven work to market- 
 place pottery. 
 
 They seem like supernatural architecture gleaming 
 out of supernatural realms in upper air. There are 
 spires and minarets and bell-towers and turrets and 
 colonnades and wrought walls; that they are ten, 
 twelve, thirteen thousand feet away, that no human 
 foot can scale them, no living earthly thing abide among 
 them, only makes their distinct semblance of palace 
 and church and city the more uncanny. And when, 
 as often happens, a sudden wreath of cloud or fantastic 
 growth of moss changes some scarred and lined rock 
 into giant likeness of human face, it becomes still hard- 
 er not to believe that they are tenanted by beings not 
 of flesh and blood. One such face we saw, which 
 never took its eyes off us for miles. Even sharp turns 
 in the road made no change in it, except to draw the 
 gray hood of fir closer round its cheeks and to make it 
 look more and more weird. 
 
 These startling and fantastic mountain shapes hedged 
 us, walled us, seemed to marshal themselves to oppose 
 us, all the way from Longarone to Tai Cadore. In 
 spite of ourselves we were overawed. If the sun had 
 not shone gayly and the peasants had not whistled and 
 sung, I think we might have been afraid. But every 
 little village was astir with work, and babies were 
 everywhere; we met low two-wheeled wagons filled 
 with hay, slowly pulled along by donkeys, while the 
 ■ driver slept on his back ; wagons loaded heavily with 
 beech and pine boards, and drawn by oxen which 
 looked like gigantic maltese kittens with horns. The 
 meadows were green with a greenness so shining that 
 it seemed to blaze ; whole fields were solid mosaics of 
 color, with red and blue and yellow and white flowers. 
 
68 THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 Little chapels were perched up on apparently inacces- 
 sible heights, above every village. " Why do they put 
 the chapels so high up, G-iacomo ? " said I. " It must 
 be very hard to climb to them." 
 
 " Ah, Signora, the air is holier there," replied the 
 Barnstable fisherman. 
 
 At Perarollo, the river Boita, and the river Piave, 
 and the huge dolomite Antelao, eleven thousand feet 
 high, all join hands to close up the Ampezzo Pass. 
 This is perhaps the most picturesque spot of the road. 
 The rivers force the mountains back a little and the sun 
 pours in ; high up on all sides are small plateaus of 
 green pasture ; the village is built into every niche of 
 foothold it can find, and is full of pretty summer-houses 
 of brown and yellow wood. On each river are lum- 
 ber-mills, and the glistening logs are rolling and drift- 
 ing down on both sides. 
 
 Three times this wonderful Ampezzo road winds 
 across the front of the Antelao before it can venture to 
 turn it; it seems to cling to the mountain's side like 
 an elastic ladder of stone, a perfect miracle of engineer- 
 ing. We were hours climbing slowly back and forth 
 on that dolomite wall, tacking, like a ship in contrary 
 winds. From the first tier of the road we looked up 
 to the other two, hanging above our heads ; from the 
 upper, we looked down into Perarollo, and could see 
 no trace of the road by which we had come. 
 
 At last we fairly rounded the mountain, and, turning 
 back again into the valley of the Boita, saw the village 
 of Tai Cadore shining before us. In an hour we had 
 reached the little inn. But a guest had arrived before 
 us, sudden, unannounced. His unwelcome presence 
 filled every room. As G-iacomo, with a ludicrous affec- 
 tation of effort, reined in his only too willing horses, a 
 man came running out of the house with significant 
 gestures exclaiming, a Do not stop, do not stop; the 
 padrone lies dying." He was the padrone's son, and 
 his eyes were red from crying. A crowd of peasants 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 69 
 
 stood about the door and in the hall ; the little dingy- 
 windows of the room on the left hand of the door were 
 darkened by heads rising one above the other, but all 
 motionless. No doubt it was in that very room that 
 the poor landlord lay, drawing his last breaths with 
 unnecessary difficulty in the close air made still closer 
 by such crowding in of friends and neighbors. I was 
 struck by the oneness of the look which death's pres- 
 ence brings on faces of simple-hearted, solitary people 
 all the world over. These men of Cadore were earlier 
 on the spot than it is the custom in Maine or New 
 Hampshire for neighbors to gather ; but I have seen at 
 many a New England funeral just such a silent, eager 
 circle of men standing around the door through which 
 the dead must be borne, and looking and listening with 
 a weird sort of alert solemnity which seems not wholly 
 sorry for the occasion. 
 
 It was a most opportune moment for us, how- 
 ever, which this good soul had selected for his dying. 
 Nothing for the reluctant Griacomo and the nerve- 
 less horses to do but to take us a mile and a half off 
 the route for dinner and rest, at Pieve di Cadore. 
 Pieve di Cadore ! the very place we had had at heart 
 ever since we left Venice, and which we had had many 
 misgivings about being able to see, while Griacomo 
 rested his horses at Tai. At Pieve di Cadore " II clivino 
 Tiziano " was born in 1477 ; at Pieve di Cadore he 
 lived till he was ten years old ; to Pieve di Cadore he 
 returned year after year, for love of his kindred, men, 
 and mountains. There, after the death of his wife, in 
 1530, he took refuge with his three motherless little 
 children; and during this visit he painted, on a banner 
 for the village church, a picture of three little children 
 giving flowers to a Madonna seated on a throne. 
 
 There, in 1560, he came again, old, but not bent, and 
 bearing the titles of Count of the Empire and Knight 
 of the Golden Spur. 
 
 There also he would have fled, in 1576, when the 
 
7° 
 
 THE AMPEZZO PASS 
 
 plague was sweeping Yenice ; but brave and strong to 
 the last, he delayed going until an edict had been 
 issued forbidding the departure of any citizen from 
 Venice. So in Yenice he died, ninety-nine years old, 
 alone, forsaken even by his servants; and the pesti- 
 lence which had taken his life thwarted his purpose 
 even after his death, for none dared carry his body — 
 as he had willed, and left order for its burial — to Pieve 
 di Cadore. 
 
 They buried it in haste in the church of the Frari, 
 in Yenice, dropping into the grave the knightly insig- 
 nia which the emperor had given to the painter ; and 
 for nearly half a century no stone marked the spot 
 where the insignia lay turning to dust, and the dust 
 lay turning into insignia of those mysterious things 
 " which shall be." 
 
 " ]STo one ever goes to the inn at Pieve di Cadore," 
 said the displeased Griacomo, with a shrug. 
 
 " Why then is it an inn?" said we with sharp log- 
 ical retort, inwardly blessing the conjunction of oar 
 star with the dying landlord's at Tai, and not caring 
 whether we could dine or not, in an inn on a street 
 where the little boy Tiziano Yecellio had played. 
 
 But the inn was an inn, and the dinner not so bad 
 that I remember it. I shall never forget, though, how 
 it was cooked ; in big iron pots, swung from derricks 
 of cranes, above a big bonfire, built on a big stone plat- 
 form, raised up in a sort of bay-window chimney, fill- 
 ing one whole side of the kitchen • benches to right of 
 the bonfire, benches to left of the bonfire; benches 
 and bonfire all in the chimney bay-window ; and peo- 
 ple sitting on the benches, I among them, with feet at 
 the bonfire ; and all the while the great iron pots boil- 
 ing and steaming and bobbing their covers, among and 
 above our feet ; the landlady reaching over and among 
 our shoulders, and sticking in ladles and pokers here 
 and there. If she had knocked off my hat, at any min- 
 ute, it would have seemed the most natural thing in 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 71 
 
 the world ; merely taking off my cover and the beef's 
 at once, lest we should boil to pieces. 
 
 She told us with pride how a deaf and dumb English 
 artist had stayed with her for two months, had walked 
 all over the Cadore country, and had carried away a 
 box full of the most beautiful pictures which he had 
 painted. u Poor gentleman, there was not much else 
 he could do, since he could neither speak nor hear." 
 " He was the sweetest gentleman." " Never made 
 any trouble." " Lived on polenta chiefly." " All the 
 children knew him and used to follow him when he 
 went off to paint." And so she ran on, adding adjec- 
 tive after adjective in the sweet Italian superlatives, 
 which are so silver smooth in their endings that there 
 seems far less of exaggeration in them than in the 
 harsher measures of more and most in other tongues. 
 It was plain that the poor lonely deaf-mute had won 
 for himself warm place in the village heart. His speech- 
 less language was a universal one ; and perhaps, after 
 all, he stood less helpless among the people than we 
 did with our stammer of poor Italian. 
 
 After dinner we followed a thread of path down 
 sharp terraces, and behind houses, into a meadow 
 which one must cross to reach the ruins of the Castle 
 of Cadore. The Castle was a castle so late as 1809. 
 Now it is a ruin, and the ugly village church, they say, 
 was built out of its stones. But it is far better as it is, 
 - — a great gateway tower, high battlements, several 
 lengths of crumbling wall, and a high square tower in 
 the middle. From its heights must be magnificent 
 view of the valleys of the Piave and the Boita, and the 
 grand mountain masses of dolomite in all directions. 
 But we did not see this view ; we climbed no hill ; we 
 asked for no castle ; we knelt in the meadow among 
 the flowers. The path was so narrow that two could 
 not pass, unless one stepped out; but to step out was 
 like stepping into spicy sea. No foot could fall there 
 without crushing more flowers than it would be easy 
 
72 
 
 THE AMFEZZO PASS. 
 
 to count, and the mere brushing by of garments stirred 
 fragrance heavy like incense. We were speechless ; 
 we could not believe ; the mosaic fields of bloom we 
 had seen on our way were dull and scanty. Then we 
 eaid, " 0, no doubt the legend is true, that Titian, when 
 he was only eleven years old, painted with juices of 
 flowers a picture of the Madonna; this is the field 
 where he picked the flowers ; and these are the same 
 reds and blues and yellows which he used." Up 
 and down in the meadow we went, picking flowers 
 in the sort of frantic haste with which in dreams or in 
 fairy stories men snatch enchanted gold in caves or 
 palaces of wizards. If the meadow had melted away 
 of a sudden, and left us empty-handed in a dusty place, 
 I think it would have been less startling than it grew 
 to be, to see each slope and hollow lying minute after 
 minute unaltered, undiminished in color, while we filled 
 our hands over and over again with flowers whose 
 shapes and whose tints were all new to us. By the 
 reckoning of clocks we were not in that meadow more 
 than twenty minutes ; but we carried out of it thirty- 
 two different kinds of flowers which no one of us ha(? 
 ever seen before. Besides these there were dozens 
 more, which we did not pick, because we knew them, 
 - — clovers, and gentians, and ladies'-tresses, and butter- 
 cups, and columbines, and bellworts, and meadow-rue, 
 and shepherd's-purse. We never saw such spot again. 
 It is part of my creed that there is no other such spot 
 in the world, and I call it Titian's Meadow. 
 
 It is but a few moments' walk from this meadow to 
 the house where he was born. It is a poor little cot- 
 tage, low and black and smoky ; an old woman, who 
 looked as if she might be a hundred or a thousand 
 years old, was hobbling and mumbling about in the 
 kitchen, over just such a stone platform of cooking- 
 stove as we had left in the inn. She was used to re- 
 ceiving visitors in the name of Titian, and had a glib 
 string of improbable story at her tongue's end. The 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 73 
 
 huge rafters overhead were burned and smoked into 
 blacks and yellows and browns, which were stronger 
 witness to centuries than any words could give ; and 
 an old stone fountain in front of the house, presided 
 over by a nameless, featureless stone saint, plashed 
 away into an eight-sided stone basin ; a very dirty lit- 
 tle boy wassailing a chip in it ; probably he looked not 
 unlike another little boy who sailed chips in it four 
 hundred years ago, and whose name now gives honor 
 to the cottage walls in this inscription : " Within these 
 humble walls Tiziano Yecelli began his celebrated 
 life." 
 
 Titian is more honored by this inscription than by 
 the full-length painting of him, which stretches up and 
 down on the bell-tower of the Pretura. Anything 
 uglier than the Pretura is seldom seen, and the ambi- 
 tious Cadorini have made bad matters worse by stuc- 
 coing the building from top to bottom and painting it 
 in imitation of old stone. But they carefully refrained 
 from disturbing the picture of Titian, and there it still 
 stands in giant hideousness ; a man apparently twelve 
 feet high, and weighing five or six hundred, swathed 
 from neck to ankles in a stiff robe of bright blue, which 
 has so little semblance of fold or fulness that it looks 
 less like a robe than like a huge blue sarcophagus into 
 which the unhappy painter had sunk up to his ears ; 
 his left hand points to the " Casa Tiziano " ; and at his 
 side, on a table covered with a flagrantly gaudy cloth, 
 lie his palette and brushes; behind the whole, a 
 straight wall of sky, ten shades bluer than the blue 
 robe, and if possible more unnatural. The continued 
 existence of this picture is proof that spirits do not 
 revisit this earth ; or at any rate cannot make use of 
 physical machinery to accomplish material ends in this 
 atmosphere. Wherever Titian is to-day, he has not 
 forgotten his beloved Cadore, and he would not let 
 this colossal abomination look down into that piazza 
 another night, if he could help himself. 
 4 
 
74 THE AMPEZZG PASS. 
 
 From the Pretura to the church through the Sunday 
 crowds of smiling people; women with short, dark 
 blue gowns and white or gray handkerchiefs tied in the 
 Albanian fashion over their heads; men with higher 
 hats, symptom of the nearing Tyrol ; children rosy and 
 fat and merry, — comforting contrast to the pallid little 
 ones of Yenice. No soul, old or young, but looked at 
 us with straight, curious, friendly gaze; they are off 
 the common routes of travel, the Cadorini, and are all 
 the friendlier and nicer for it. The old sexton knew 
 very well, however, as soon as we crossed the thresh- 
 old of the church, what we would see ; and it was 
 with great pride that he drew the curtain from the 
 group of family portraits under name of Madonna and 
 Saints, which hangs in the chapel of the Vecellio fam- 
 ily, and which Titian painted. 
 
 There seems odd mixture of reverence for earth and 
 irreverence for heaven in the way the masters painted 
 portraits of wives and nephews for Madonnas and Saints. 
 In this picture, " San Tiziano " the patron saint of the 
 Vecelli kneels on the right hand of the Madonna. He 
 is, however, only Titian's nephew Marco, and the Ma- 
 donna is Titian's wife ; while Titian's uncle Francesco 
 figures, by help of a cross on his shoulder, as St. An- 
 drew, and in one corner Titian himself appears as a so- 
 ber acolyte. A more comfortable and domestic looking 
 family group was never photographed under name of 
 Smith or Jones. Except that the little baby curled up 
 in the mother's lap is naked, there seems ncahing un- 
 natural (or supernatural) about their all happening to 
 be there together just at that minute. 
 
 There is another of Titian's pictures here., said to have 
 been painted when he was only twenty years old. 
 This also is of a Madonna and Saints ; there were a 
 few other pictures which the sexton pressed us to see, 
 a Pordenone, he said, and a Palma Vecchio: but we 
 liked the open air of the market-place and the sight of 
 the mountains better. Stands and wagons o* ituit and 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 75 
 
 silk handkerchiefs and chickens and earthen pipkins 
 filled the corners. Cadore is a rough country, and 
 gives small reward to them that farm it, but it has 
 always been famous for fruits. Even in the thirteenth 
 century there came to be a proverb, 
 
 " Cadore and Feltre for apples and pears, 
 Serravalle for swords." 
 
 The clouds began to gather and wheel among the 
 crags of the dolomite mountains. They were ten thou- 
 sand feet up in air, to be sure, and miles away to north 
 and west and south ; but they meant rain, — rain close 
 upon us, violent, pelting, driving rain. These were 
 such sudden gatherings and massings of clouds as Titian 
 had watched and studied and carried away in memory, 
 and reproduced, when, living on the serene, soft, gliding 
 level of Venice, he threw into so many of his pictures 
 marvellous backgrounds of sharp, abrupt mountain 
 outlines with clouds circling round their summits. 
 Doubtless Venetian critics who had not been in Cadore 
 found these mountain backgrounds unnatural and im- 
 possible. Certainly a faithful drawing of the weird 
 and fantastic dolomites would seem simply grotesque 
 caricature to one who had never seen them. Even 
 a photograph would seem incredible. 
 
 The peaks of Marmarolo and Duranno disappeared ; 
 great sheets of mist came driving down, blotting out 
 even the castle ; blotting out also every trace of con- 
 tent and good- humor upon Griacomo's face. This small 
 addition to his prescribed route had been too much for 
 his philosophy, and our delays had finally piled the 
 last feather on the camel's back of his patience. Per- 
 haps, however, we were unjust; perhaps he knew 
 even better than we did the feebleness of the spectral 
 horses which drew us slowly out of Pieve di Cadore 
 in that streaming rain ; it was an uncanny atmosphere ; 
 all shapes seemed lost; and then, again, all shapes 
 seemed to loom and quiver and dance ; the black horse 
 
76 THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 looked white, and the white horse did not seem to be 
 there, though we heard his languid footfalls. 
 
 " Shut up the carriage, G-iacomo," said we. " It is 
 of no use to keep it open in such a blinding storm." 
 
 Quickly and silently he roofed us over with the ill- 
 smelling leather flap ; and as silent as he, and almost 
 as sullenly, — shall I confess? — we took the stifling 
 afternoon's journey to Cortina d' Ampezzo. We seemed 
 driving in the teeth of sudden winter ; the rain changed 
 to sleet and the wind howled; the jagged peaks of 
 dolomite thrust themselves here and there out of the 
 clouds as if they were being hurled at us by invisible 
 giants. It was nearly eight o'clock when we drove 
 into the little piazza of Cortina d' Ampezzo. Suddenly 
 we halt. In the stormy twilight a woman has run 
 across the road, and almost taken our horses by the 
 head. " Are these the American ladies ? Then they 
 are to come to our inn. Their friends are awaiting 
 them there." 
 
 This was one of the sisters Barbaria, who keep the 
 " House of the Star of Gold " ; and lest by any ill chance 
 we might go to the rival inn, she had been watching 
 the Cadore road all the afternoon. 
 
 0, how beamed the pleasant English faces which 
 smiled our welcome in that low doorway ! and how 
 crackled the fire in the kitchen where two sisters Bar- 
 baria, with high-crowned black hats on their heads, 
 were washing dishes ; one sister Barbaria was picking 
 feathers off tiny birds; another sister Barbaria was 
 piling up our bags and bundles on her brawny arms ; 
 another sister Barbaria was asking what we would 
 have for supper ; and a fifth sister Barbaria was stand- 
 in the hall looking on : five sisters Barbaria ! and they 
 have kept the " Albergo Stella d' Oro " for many years, 
 without any help from man. 
 
 Presently appealed a sixth sister Barbaria, but she 
 was a fine lady of quite other style. She was Barbaria 
 no longer, having married a young German engineer, 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 77 
 
 a clever fellow who had had charge of that part of the 
 Ampezzo road between Cortina d' Ampezzo and Ca- 
 dore ; and, staying at the " Star of Gold," had found 
 a wife among his landladies. This sister wore a silk 
 gown and a show of jewelry, had been with her hus- 
 band to Rome and Venice, and was now summering at 
 Cortina, like any other lady of means. But she was 
 far less interesting than her guileless sisters, who had 
 never been out of the village in which they were born, 
 and who shared all the work of the inn, even the hard- 
 est and most menial, with a sisterly good-will and 
 good-cheer which were beautiful to see. 
 
 The two who wore black hats like common peasants, 
 and who drudged all day in the low basement kitchen 
 and outhouses, seemed as happy and loving as the others, 
 who were much better dressed, and who cared for the 
 rooms, waited at table, kept accounts, etc. 
 
 One of these was a woman who would have been 
 an artist if she had not been an innkeeper and lived in 
 Cortina. It was pathetic to see how this poor soul 
 had found outlet for her artistic impulse in works of 
 worsted and crochet cotton. The " best room " of 
 the " Star of G-old " was decorated with her handi- 
 work, — fall long curtains of knit lace at the windows 
 and over the bed ; a counterpane of the same lace ; a 
 full draping for the toilet-table ; and crocheted covers 
 for all the chairs. The patterns were all singularly 
 graceful and pretty. Lifting the chair covers, we found, 
 to our astonishment, that the chair bottoms were all 
 most elaborately worked in gay worsteds on cloth. 
 Then we said to one of the sisters, " How pretty these 
 things are ! Did you make them ? " 
 
 Her plain old face lit up with pleasure. " no ; my 
 sister Anita made them all. She does most beautiful 
 work, Sister Anita. She shall show you." And run- 
 ning out, she called Anita, who came shyly but with 
 pleasure; poor, brown, withered, simple old maiden 
 woman, whose one joy had been to fashion these gay 
 
7 8 THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 flowers. She brought in her hand pieces of black and 
 brown broadcloth, enough for half a dozen chairs and 
 two crickets, most elaborately embroidered. 
 
 The patterns were stiff, and the colors not always 
 good. 
 
 " We have to take what we can get, here in this 
 poor place," said Sister Anita ; sometimes I think, if I 
 could go myself to Brixen, I could surely find prettier 
 patterns, but I must send always. Are there not pret- 
 tier patterns ? " she asked with pathetic eagerness. 
 Could any human heart have been flinty enough not 
 to equivocate in reply to this question of this poor 
 hungry soul ? Then when she found that we were so 
 interested in her work, and admired it so heartily, she 
 darted away and returned presently with great wreaths 
 and bunches of worsted flowers, — lilies and poppies 
 and gentians and pinks, and long ivy vines, made upon 
 wires, and really beautiful. These were to decorate 
 the house with on festa day ; she had many drawers full 
 of them ; had enough to decorate the whole house, " till 
 it looked like garden ! " And no one had ever taught 
 her to make them ; she had picked the flowers in the 
 field, she said, and set them up in a glass before her, and 
 copied them as nearly as she could. "Why do you 
 not make up these chairs and crickets ? " we thought- 
 lessly asked ; " they are too pretty to be laid away in 
 a drawer." 
 
 Anita replied that she was too poor ; it would take 
 much money. But Anita did not tell the truth. I 
 saw in her cheek another story, written in red, as in- 
 deed it might well be, — the story which had in it a 
 hope deferred, perhaps lost forever. Poor Anita, she 
 is old and ugly. I am afraid the embroidered chairs 
 will never grace a weddmg-feast. 
 
 Next morning we looked oat on snow ; everywhere 
 fine feathery dust of snow ; thin rims of ice in the 
 stone fountain before the inn, and solid masses of white 
 on the sides of the mountains. But the first hour of 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 79 
 
 sun melted it all off the meadows, and left the flowers 
 brighter than ever, glistening as after a heavy dew. 
 Tiny white lilies not two inches long nor more than 
 eight inches from the ground, and low gentians of a 
 blue like the blue of lapis-lazuli, — these were growing 
 everywhere ; we filled our hands with them within five 
 minutes' walk of the inn. Later in the day the Ger- 
 man engineer brought in a bouquet which he had gath- 
 ered farther up on the hills, of such flowers as we had 
 seen at Pieve di Cadore ; twenty-four different kinds 
 in that bouquet, all colors, all shapes, all fragrances ! 
 
 There is one shoemaker in Cortina d' Ampezzo. His 
 shop is in an upper chamber, about eight feet square. 
 There I found him sitting on a low seat, with a leath- 
 ern apron, and spectacles way down his nose, holding a 
 shoe wrong side up between his knees, and sewing 
 away like any old man in Lynn. I sat down gravely 
 in front of him, held out a morocco bow in one hand 
 and a tattered American boot in the other, and asked 
 if he could sew the bow on the boot. He was a Ger- 
 man, but the apparition of my boot was too much for 
 even his phlegm , he turned it over and over and over. 
 A boot that buttoned he had never seen , I showed 
 him my button-hook; his amazement deepened; he 
 buttoned and unbuttoned the boot with it, grunting 
 out thicker and thicker, " Jas, jas," at every turn of 
 the instrument. Finally he set about the sewing on 
 of the bow. The door opened ; more men of Cortina 
 came in ; they had seen me go up ] they scented ad- 
 venture ; one, two, three ; the room grew very hot , 
 the buttonhook was passed about; the three men 
 turned it up and down, and looked at me. I could not 
 understand a dozen words they said. It was very em- 
 barrassing. The time came to put on my boot; the 
 shoemaker leaned forward to see how I did it ; the 
 three men of Cortina crowded around and stooped 
 down to see how I did it ; a sense of the ludicrous 
 helplessness of my situation so overcame me that I 
 
8o THE AMPEZZO PASS. 
 
 broke out into a genuine laugh, which, improper as it 
 might have been, seemed to put me quite at my ease 
 again, and I displayed to the good souls the mechan- 
 ism of button-hook, button, and button-hole as com- 
 placently as if I had been a vender of the patent. 
 Then they all four accompanied me to the door, and 
 bade me good morning with the reverence due to the 
 owner of such mysterious boots. But I resolved not 
 to take off my boots again in Tyrolese shoe-shops ! 
 
 How bitterly we regretted the ignorant haste in 
 which we had, at Conegliano, pledged ourselves to ask 
 but one day's rest at Cortina d' Ampezzo. We would 
 gladly have stayed with the sisters Barbaria a week ; 
 we comforted ourselves by air castles of another sum- 
 mer in which we would come again and stay a month, 
 bringing with us them whom we most loved. Hope- 
 fully the elder sister made it clear to us that she would 
 welcome us as guests for a month at seven francs a day. 
 A month, face to face with those wonderful pink and yel- 
 low and gray and white and salmon-colored mountains 
 of dolomite ! A month of those flowers ! Thirty times 
 as many as we had picked that day; and dear soft 
 brown eyes which we knew, to light up with joy at 
 sight of all we could bring ! What a dream it was , 
 on what shore does it stand now, pale in its death, but 
 transfigured in its resurrection among other sweet 
 things which we dare to call lost, when they have 
 only gone before ! 
 
 The dining-room windows of the "Star of G-old" 
 are filled with geraniums; not "plants," not "bushes," 
 as we commonly see, but trees, — trees tall, branching, 
 sturdy, and bearing flowers as apple-trees bear apples , 
 blossoms scarlet and rose-pink, and marvellous white 
 with purple and crimson markings. Lavishly the elder 
 sister gathers them for departing guests ; and we drove 
 off in the early afternoon, each of us with a big bunch 
 in our lap. 
 
 We were not yet at the summit of the Pass. Hours 
 
THE AMPEZZO PASS. 81 
 
 more of slow climbing among larches and pines and 
 rocks and flowers ; at last the larches disappeared, then 
 the pines; nothing was left but stunted firs. On a 
 dark icy plateau at the very top of the Pass we came 
 suddenly upon a great field of blue forget-me-nots; 
 just beyond that, a silent lake which must be unfath- 
 omable, to look so black; and then we began to go 
 slowly down, down the other side ; soft wooded slopes, 
 and valleys of grain, and a look of thrift. We felt- 
 almost like dodging, as if we were pelted with pebbles, 
 when the German gutturals first began to fly in the 
 air. We forgot the German for " chicken," and fell 
 back on " Kut-kut-ka-da-kut," which is language for 
 " chicken" all the world over. We shuddered at sight 
 of the huge effigies of the dead Christ, at corners of the 
 roads ; we found the men surly, and women and men 
 alike hideous, and hideously alike ; we no longer thought 
 the horses too slow ; we grudged each mile that they 
 took us farther from Italy. Each of us had left half 
 her heart in Venice, and the other half in the " House 
 of the Star of Gold," with the sisters Barbaria. 
 
 gi. W jj» 
 
A MAY-DAY IN ALBANO. 
 
 "TTTE went Maying on donkeys, and we found 
 W more flowers than could have been picked in 
 a month. What a May-day for people who had all 
 their lives before gone Maying in india-rubbers, and an 
 east-wind, on the Atlantic coast of America ; had been 
 glad and grateful over a few saxifrages and houstonias, 
 and knelt in ecstasy if they found a shivering clump 
 of dog-tooth violets. 
 
 Our donkey man looked so like a New Englander 
 that I have an uncomfortable curiosity about him : slim, 
 thin, red-haired, freckled, blue-eyed, hollow-chested, I 
 believe he had run away in his youth from Barnstable, 
 and drifted to the shores of the Alban Lake. I watched 
 him in vain to discover any signs of his understanding 
 our conversation, but I am sure I heard him say " gee " 
 to the donkeys. 
 
 The donkey boy, too, had New England eyes, hon- 
 est dark blue gray, with perpetual laugh in them. It 
 was for his eyes I took him along, he being as super- 
 fluous as a fifth leg to the donkey. But when he 
 danced up and down with bare feet on the stones ki 
 front of the hotel door, and twisted and untwisted his 
 dirty little fingers in agony of fear lest I should say no, 
 all the while looking up into my face with a hopeful 
 imploring smile, so like one I shall never see again, I 
 loved him, and engaged him then and there always to 
 walk by my donkey's nose so long as I rode donkeys 
 in Albano. I had no sooner done this than, presto, my 
 boy disappeared ; and all I could see in his stead was 
 a sort of human pin-wheel, with ten dangerous toeti 
 
A MA Y-DA Y IN ALBANO. %x 
 
 for spokes, flying round and round by my side. What 
 a pleased Italian boy, aged eleven, can do in the way 
 of revolving somersets passes belief, even while you 
 are looking at it. But in a moment he came down 
 right end up, and, with the air of a mature protector, 
 took my donkey by the rope, and off we went. 
 
 I never find myself forming part of a donkey, with a 
 donkey man in rear, without being reminded of all the 
 pictures I have seen of the " Flight into Egypt," and 
 being impressed anew with a sense of the terrible time 
 that Holy Family must have had trying to make haste 
 on such kind of animal : of all beasts, to escape from a 
 hostile monarch on ! And one never pities Joseph any 
 more for having to go on foot; except for the name of 
 the thing, walking must always be easier. 
 
 If I say that we climbed up a steep hill to the Capu- 
 chin church and convent, and then bore off to the 
 right along the shores of the Alban Lake, and resolved 
 to climb on till we reached the Convent of Palazzuola, 
 which is half-way up the side of Monte Cavo, it does 
 not mean anything to people who do not know the 
 Alban Lake and Monte Cavo. Yet how else can I tell 
 where we had our Maying ? The donkey path from 
 Albano up to Palazzuola — and there is no other way 
 of going up — zigzags along the side of the hill, which 
 is the south shore of the Alban Lake. Almost to the 
 last it is thickly wooded ; looking at this south shore, 
 from a distance, those who have been through the path 
 can trace its line faintly marked among the tree-tops, 
 like a fine thread indenting them ; but strangers to it 
 would never dream that it was there. The path is 
 narrow ■ only wide enough for two donkeys to pass, 
 if both behave well. 
 
 On the left hand you look down into the mystic lake, 
 which is always dark and troubled, no matter how 
 blue the sky ; never did I see a smile or a placid look 
 of rest on the Alban Lake. Doubtless it is still linked 
 with fates and oracles we do not know. On the right 
 
84 A MA Y-DA Y IN ALBANO. 
 
 hand the hill stretches up, sometimes sharply in cliffs, 
 sometimes in gentle slopes with moist hollows full of 
 ivies and ferns; everywhere are flowers in clusters, 
 beds, thickets. It seemed paltry to think of putting a 
 few into a basket, hopeless to try to call the roll of their 
 names. First come the vetches — scrambling in and 
 out, hooking on to everything without discrimination ; 
 surely a vetch is the most easily contented of plants ; 
 it will hold by a grass stalk, or an ilex trunk, or lie flat 
 on the roadside, and blossom away as fast as it can in 
 each place. Yellow, and white, and crimson, and scar- 
 let, and purple, and pink, and pale green ; — seven 
 different vetches we brought home. Periwinkle, 
 matted and tangled, with flowers one inch and a half 
 in diameter (by measurement) ; violets in territories, 
 and of all shades of blue ; Solomon's-seals of three 
 different kinds ; dark blue bee-larkspur whose stems 
 were two feet high; white honeysuckle wreathing 
 down from tall trees; feathery eupatoriums; great arums, 
 not growing like ours, on a slender stalk, but looking 
 like a huge cornucopia made out of yellow corn-husks, 
 with one end set in the ground; red catchfly and 
 white; tiny pinks not bigger than heads of pins; 
 clovers of new sorts and sizes ; one of a delicate yel- 
 low, a pink one in small flat heads, and another grow- 
 ing in plumes or tassels two inches long, crimson at 
 base and shading up to white at top. One could not 
 fancy this munched in mouthfuls even by sacred cat- 
 tle ; it should be eaten, head by head, like asparagus, 
 nibbled slowly down to the luscious color at the stem. 
 The holly was in blossom and the white thorn, and 
 huge bushes of yellow broom swung out across our 
 path at every turn ; we thought they must light it up 
 at night. Here and there were communities of crimson 
 cyclamens, that most bewildering of all Italy's flowers. 
 " Mad violets " the Italians call them, and there is a 
 pertinence in the name; they hang their heads and 
 look down as if no violet could be more shy, but all 
 
A MA Y-DA Y IN ALBANO. 85 
 
 the while their. petals turn back like the ears of a 
 vicious horse, and their whole expression is of the most 
 fascinating mixture of modesty and mischief. Always 
 with the cyclamens we found the forget-me-nots, nod- 
 ding above them in fringing canopies of blue ; also the 
 little flower that the Italians call forget-me-not, which 
 is the tiniest of things, shaped like our forget-me-not, 
 but of a pale purple color. Dandelions there were too, 
 and buttercups, warming our hearts to see ; we would 
 not admit that they were any more golden than under 
 the colder sun where we had first picked them. Upon 
 the chickweed, however, we looked in speechless 
 wonder : chickweed it was, and no mistake, — but if 
 the canary-birds in America could only see it ! One 
 bud would be a breakfast. One bud, do I say ? I can 
 fancy a thrifty Dicky eating out a ragged hole in one 
 side, like a robin from a cherry, and leaving the rest 
 for next day. The flowers are as wonderful as the 
 buds, whitening the ground and the hedges every- 
 where with their shining white stars, as large as silver 
 quarters of dollars used to be. 
 
 Now I come with shamefacedness to speak of the 
 flowers whose names I did not know. What brutish 
 people we are, even those of us who think we love 
 Nature well, to live our lives out so ignorant of her 
 good old families ! We are quite sure to know the 
 names and generations of hundreds of insignificant 
 men and women, merely because they go to our church, 
 or live in our street; and we should feel ourselves 
 much humiliated if we were not on what is called 
 " speaking terms " with the best people wherever we 
 go. But we are not ashamed to spend summer after 
 summer face to face with flowers and trees and stones, 
 and never so much as know them by name. I wonder 
 they treat us so well as they do, provide us with food 
 and beauty so often, poison us so seldom. It must be 
 only out of the pity they feel, being divmer than we. 
 
 The flowers which I did not know were many more 
 
86 A MA Y-DA Y IN ALBANO. 
 
 than those which I knew, and most of them I cannot 
 describe. There was a blue flower like a liverwort, 
 only larger and lighter, and with a finely notched 
 green leaf; there was a tiny bell-shaped flower, yellow, 
 growing by twos and threes, and nodding perpetually ; 
 there was a trumpet-shaped flower the size of a thim- 
 ble, which had scarlet and blue and purple all blended 
 together in fine lines and shadings ; there was another 
 trumpet-shaped flower, quite small, which had its blue 
 and purple and scarlet in separate trumpets but on one 
 stem ; there was a tiny blue flower, shaped like a ver- 
 bena, but set at top of a cluster of shut buds whose 
 hairy calyxes were of a brilliant claret, red ; there was 
 a yellow flower, tube-shaped, slender, long, white at 
 the brim and brown at the base, and set by twos, in 
 shelter of the joining of its leaves to the stalk ; there 
 was a fine feathery white flower, in branching heads, 
 like our wild parsley, but larger petalled, and a white, 
 star-shaped flower which ran riot everywhere; and 
 besides these, were so many others which I have no 
 colors to paint, that at night of this wonderful May- 
 day, when we numbered its flowers, there were fifty- 
 two kinds. 
 
 As we came out of the woods upon the craggy pre- 
 cipices near the convent, we found the rocks covered 
 with purple and pink thyme. The smell of it, crushed 
 under the donkey's hoofs, was delicious. Somebody 
 was homesick enough to say that it was like going 
 across a New England kitchen, the day before Thanks- 
 giving, and spilling the sweet marjoram. 
 
 The door of the cloister was wide open. Two monks 
 were standing just outside, absorbed in watching 
 an artist who was making a sketch of the old fountain. 
 The temptation was too strong for one member of our 
 party ; when nobody looked, she sprang in and walked 
 on. determined to have one look over the parapet 
 down into the lake. She found herself under old ilex- 
 trees, among dark box hedges, and the stone parapet 
 
A MAY-DAY IN ALB A NO. 87 
 
 many rods ahead. A monk, weeding among the cab- 
 bages, lifted his head, turned pale at sight of her, and 
 looked instantly down at his weeding again, doubt- 
 less crossing himself, and praying to be kept from 
 temptation. She saw other monks hurrying to and 
 fro at end of the garden, evidently consulting what 
 was to be clone. She knew no one of them would 
 dare to come and speak to a woman, so she pushed on 
 for the parapet, and reached it. Presently a workman, 
 not a monk, came running breathlessly, " Signorina, 
 Signorina, it is not permitted to enter here." 
 
 " I do not understand Italian," said she, smiling 
 and bowing, and turning away and looking over the 
 parapet. Down, down, hundreds of feet below, lay 
 the lake, black, troubled, unfathomed. A pebble could 
 have been swung by a string from this parapet far out 
 into the lake. It was a sight not to be forgotten. The 
 workman gesticulated with increased alarm and hor- 
 ror : " clearest Signorina, indeed it is impossible 
 for you to remain here. The holy fathers," — at this 
 moment the donkey man came hurrying in for dear 
 life, with most obsequious and deprecating gestures 
 and words, beckoning the young lady out, and explain- 
 ing that it was all a mistake, that the Signorina was 
 Inglese and did not understand a word of Italian, for 
 which gratuitous lie I hope he may be forgiven. I am 
 sure he enjoyed the joke ; at any rate, we did, and I 
 shall always be glad that one woman has been inside 
 the closed cloister of Palazzuola, and looked from its 
 wall down into the lake. 
 
 We climbed round the convent on a narrow rocky 
 path overhanging the lake, to see an old tomb " sup- 
 posed to be that of Cneius Cornelius Scipio Hispal- 
 lus." We saw no reason to doubt its being his. Then 
 we climbed still farther up, into a field where there was 
 the most wonderful massing of flowers we had yet 
 seen : the whole field was literally a tangle of many- 
 colored vetches, clovers, chickweed, and buttercups. 
 
88 A MA Y-DA Y IN ALBANO. 
 
 We stumbled and caught our feet in the vetches, as 
 one does in blackberry- vines , but if we had fallen we 
 should have fallen into the snowy arms of the white 
 narcissus, with which the whole field glistened like a 
 silver tent under the sun. Never have I seen any 
 flower show so solemnly beautiful, unless it might have 
 been a great morning opening I once saw of giant 
 pond-lilies, in a pond on Block Island. But here there 
 were, in addition to the glittering white disks, purple 
 and pink and yellow orchids, looking, as orchids always 
 do, like imprisoned spirits just about to escape. 
 
 As we came down the mountain the sunset lights 
 kindled the whole Campagna into a flaming sea. The 
 Mediterranean beyond seemed, by some strange opti- 
 cal effect, to be turned up around the horizon, like a 
 golden rim holding the misty sea. The lake looked 
 darker and darker at every step of our descent. Mt. 
 Soracte stood clear cut against the northern sky, and 
 between us and it went up the smoke of that enchant- 
 ress, Rome, the great dome of St. Peter's looming and 
 fading and looming and fading again through the yel- 
 low mist, like a gigantic bubble, as the power of the 
 faith it represents has loomed, and faded, and loomed, 
 through all the ages. 
 
AN AFTERNOON IN MEMORIAM, IN 
 SALZBURG. 
 
 PARACELSUS, ST. RUPERT, AND MOZART. 
 
 THESE were the names on our list, the guide-book, 
 and not we, being responsible for the odd suc- 
 cession. 
 
 Poor Paracelsus ! it has always seemed that the 
 world dealt hardly by him. Undoubtedly he believed 
 that there was an Elixir of Life which could be put in 
 a bottle, and a philosopher's stone, at touch of which 
 all things would turn into gold. We have all been 
 searching after these very things all our days, and 
 without half so much philanthropy about it as he had ; 
 for we try, by secret ways, after only just so much 
 elixir as will keep our own poor little body fresh, and 
 enough gold to provide it with clothes and pleasures. 
 But he spoke openly of his researches, and meant to sell 
 his elixir to the whole world, and to hire out his 
 philosopher's stone by the day. Three hundred and 
 twenty-eight years ago he died in Salzburg, and is 
 buried in the churchyard of San Sebastian. The house 
 he died in is still pointed out, but that had no interest 
 tous, while the grave drew us strongly. What uncon- 
 scious tribute we pay to the doctrine of the resurrection 
 by the love and honor in which we hold graves, cen- 
 tury after century! Surely in our hearts we believe 
 that each such spot becomes forever unlike all other 
 ground : by whatever process the dear flesh crumbles, 
 returns to dust, and is changed into the leaf, flower, 
 and seed that perish, in our hearts we believe that the 
 grave remains a grave, and that at least this much is sure ; 
 
9 o AN AFTERNOON IN MEMORIAM, 
 
 that the happy, soaring, growing spirit, which has gone 
 on in the worlds, will never forget where the tiny spot 
 is on this one in which its human body was laid. 
 
 In the time of the cholera, old men and women of 
 Salzburg went in crowds to pray over the grave of 
 Paracelsus, hoping to secure his protection against the 
 disease ; such immortal force is there to an earnestly 
 believed idea. Paracelsus, even dead, and three hun- 
 dred years dead, still finds believers in his Elixir of Life. 
 Doubtless, also, this praying saved many people from 
 cholera ; faith being the best Elixir of Life yet dis- 
 covered. 
 
 We had no chance to benefit by any efficacy which 
 may still linger in his tombstone, for find it we could 
 not, though we walked patiently round and round, and 
 over and over the San Sebastian graveyard. Sacristans 
 are always out of the way when you wish them in, and 
 vice versa. There were several sorrowful people there, 
 planting flowers on a grave, and a lifeless old man 
 saying his beads before a shrine, but no sacristan, and 
 nobody who had ever heard of Paracelsus. Probably 
 we saw the stone and walked over it fifty times, for 
 there were many so sunken and old that we could make 
 nothing of the letters on them, and over the oldest and 
 most illegible we spent most time and emotion. The 
 graveyard is so full of stones and crosses, and boxes 
 of earth with little gardens in them, that it looks 
 like some sort of sepulchral shop. The crowding in 
 these German churchyards has something positively 
 blasphemous about it, and is noways redeemed by the 
 setting of flowers and hanging of wreaths. The whole 
 expression is of jostle and jam, suggests all sorts of ir- 
 reverent conjectures, and robs the words " God's Acre " 
 of all meaning. When G-od has so many acres, it is a 
 sin to so crowd graves. 
 
 Around three sides of the San Sebastian churchyard 
 are cloister-like galleries, fenced off by iron railings, 
 and divided into compartments for families. Each en- 
 
IN SALZBURG. 
 
 91 
 
 closure was filled with plants in pots, running ivies, and 
 crosses, usually one large and ugly stone in each com- 
 partment, and on the crosses most hideous wreaths 
 and pictures ; paper wreaths of rusty black and dingy 
 white, looking more like sea-weed than anything else, 
 twists of old limp crape, old evergreen wreaths dark- 
 brown with age, and common penny pictures with 
 tattered artificial flowers round them. But the final 
 horror was in a sort of grotto near the gate. Behind 
 an iron railing in this grotto were shelves holding 
 rows of ghastly skulls, carefully arranged, piled one 
 above another, and labelled with their names. Whether 
 these were skulls which had been crowded out of 
 their graves by the increase of population in the San 
 Sebastian churchyard, I have no right to say ; but this 
 seemed the most probable solution of their being 
 where they were. A mumbling old woman stood by 
 one side, and peered in between the rails, her head 
 shaking with palsy, and her poor skinny hands clutch- 
 ing a rosary. " We are all alike in death, alike in 
 death," muttered she, half to herself and half to us. 
 We walked faster to get away from her. She sound- 
 ed and felt like an ill omen. 
 
 ISText on our list came the Church of St. Peter's; 
 with enthusiasm somewhat damped as to graveyards, 
 we drove there. Here, as before, crowded graves, 
 hideous stones, faded wreaths, and no sacristan. We 
 saw in the church a monument to Michael Haydn, 
 brother of the composer, too ugly to be described. 
 We saw St. Rupert's cell, which is a hole in a rock, 
 and St. Rupert's tomb, and then we went on, with 
 still damper enthusiasm, to look up Mozart. This is 
 always the way, I find, in a day of sight-seeing of the 
 historical or memorial order. In the morning, heroes 
 are heroes, and their graves are shrines. By noon, 
 they are nobodies, and you don't care where they are 
 buried ; or, at least, you don't believe they are buried 
 where people say they are. 
 
9 2 AN AFTERNOON IN MEMO RI AM, 
 
 But all our weary indifference vanished the moment 
 We crossed the threshold of the chamber in which Salz- 
 burg keeps the relics of her Mozart. We were met 
 by a little sturdy red-faced man, all smiles, from whose 
 lips it would not have surprised us to hear, " Och, an' 
 it 's mesilf that 's afther bein' glad to say yees : an' ye'll 
 plaze to walk in, shure." Really, it is impossible to 
 accustom one's self to this perpetual recurrence of Cork 
 in South Germany ; it sounds as oddly to hear these 
 red-headed, red-faced, freckled fellows speaking Ger- 
 man, as it would to hear a squad of laborers on the 
 Erie railroad speaking Latin. However, nothing but 
 German could this little man speak, and an avalanche 
 there was of that, so enthusiastic and warm was he in 
 displaying his cherished relics. 
 
 Nothing daunted by our ignorance of his language r 
 he went on and on, pouring out information, till, partly 
 by dint of his reiterations, and partly by the mesmeric 
 effect of his determination that we should understand, 
 we really did comprehend much that he said. 
 
 On the walls were portraits of Mozart at different 
 ages, beginning with him at six years old, in the court 
 dress which he wore when he played before Maria 
 Theresa. In this he is a round-cheeked, stupid, obsti- 
 nate-looking little boy, just such as play in the dirt in 
 every road in Germany to-day. 
 
 A large and not very good oil-painting shows him as 
 a young man playing a duet with his sister, to the se- 
 vere critic their father, who sits by listening with his 
 violin resting on his arm. Above them hangs the pic- 
 ture of their mother, a portrait within a portrait, far 
 the most striking face in the group. If the portraits 
 be good, it is easy to see that however much me- 
 chanical facility Mozart may have inherited from his 
 father, the Chapel-Master, his tine quality of genius 
 came from his mother. 
 
 Constance Weber, with her hair in indescribable snarl, 
 hangs between Mozart's mother and sister. If she 
 
IN SALZBURG. 
 
 93 
 
 habitually wore her hair in that fashion, Mozart's mar- 
 riage is inexplicable. Farther on she appears again, 
 subdued into the meekest of old ladies, with light curls 
 and a close cap, the Frau Nissen. Her "2d Mann," 
 as the good little Irishman wrote it down for us, was 
 one Nissen, a Danish consul, and a very commonplace- 
 looking Nissen he was, if one may judge from his pic- 
 ture, which looked strangely out of place in the room 
 devoted to relics of Mozart. 
 
 In the middle of the room stood Mozart's piano, a 
 small one of only five octaves, but shaped like the 
 grand pianos of to-day. Tinkle, tinkle, went the keys 
 under the little man's red puffy fingers. We did not 
 dare ask him to let it alone, but with each note that 
 he struck it became harder than ever to fancy Mozart's 
 ever having been seated before it. No wonder that 
 Beethoven said disrespectful things of pianos, if this 
 be a specimen of the best their day afforded. What 
 would he and Mozart say to an Erard or Chickering 
 of 1869 ! Against the wall stood a still more old-fash- 
 ioned thing with still more pathetic tinkle to its keys, 
 a little old spinet, on which, if we understood correctly, 
 Mozart composed his Requiem. This, too, we wished 
 to see locked forever ; how much more touching me- 
 morial of a great musician would be his instrument 
 forever locked, never to be played on by mortal hand, 
 than set wide open in a museum to be thrummed by 
 masters and misses in the same mood in which they 
 would carve their names on the legs, if it were per- 
 mitted. 
 
 My letter will be too long, if I tell in detail of all 
 the interesting relics in this room ; manuscript music, 
 composed and written by Mozart at the age of eight ; 
 old exercise books from which he had practised ; four 
 large volumes of manuscript letters ; one short note 
 which can be bought for the small sum of two hundred 
 francs ; an old frayed and faded satin letter-case, which 
 was embroidered for him by one of his wife's sisters, 
 
94 AN AFTERNOON IN MEMORIAM, ETC. 
 
 and which he always carried in his pocket ; a seal and 
 a ring which he always wore ; these were tossing about 
 loose in a common wooden box, and with them a gar- 
 net cross which had belonged to his sister. We said 
 hard things of the Frau JSTissen for not having made 
 sure that these treasures were kept sacred from public 
 view. 
 
 We bought a bad photograph of the fat little boy in 
 court dress, wrote our names in a big book, where all 
 the musical and many of the unmusical celebrities of the 
 world had Written theirs before us, and then we bade 
 good by to the pleasant and voluble German Irishman. 
 On the way home we looked at the bronze statue of 
 Mozart in the centre of the Michael Platz. It is stiff 
 and unmeaning. Then we drove past two houses, in 
 one of which he was born, and in the other lived ; but 
 by this time we were tired again, and were seized with 
 sudden doubts as to the truth of the inscriptions on 
 their walls. At any rate, whoever has or has not been 
 born, lived, and died in them, they look exactly like four 
 fifths of the dreary, pale-colored houses in Salzsburg. 
 
THE RETURNED VETERANS' FEST IN 
 SALZBURG. 
 
 " ' Ah, that I do not know,' quoth he ; 
 ' But 't was a famous victory.' " 
 
 THE Austrians must have the same happy faculty of 
 being pleased about victories which the old man 
 in the memorable Waterloo ballad had. Seeing them 
 yesterday (June 27, 1869), one would have supposed 
 that the Austrian eagle never slunk out of Italy, and 
 that every one of these veterans had won his title to 
 the name, by helping on a series of glorious successes. 
 On some of the banners there were even names of 
 places where they had memorable defeats, and the 
 wind seemed to take particular pains to keep those 
 banners spread out at full size; but I dare say few 
 people knew the difference : the beer was good, and 
 the panels played the tunes of conquerors. 
 
 All the way from Innspruck to Salzburg we had caught 
 glimpses in the little towns of pine arches, green mot- 
 toes, and a general expression of " fest " ; the Veterans 
 were in our very train, many of them, and we saw 
 them kissing each other, but did not know who they 
 were, nor understand what it all meant, till at Salzburg, 
 in the hall of the Europa, we read the pink placard 
 giving the programme for the Festival the next day. 
 
 They begin things early in this country : " Music at 
 six " was first on the list. Sure enough, at six o'clock, 
 there it was, band after band, and a procession of 
 Veterans (all under fifty years of age), marching past 
 our windows. Each man had a bunch of green leaves 
 in his hat, and one involuntarily thought of St. Patrick's 
 Day in New York. At ten o'clock there was to be a 
 
9 6 THE RETURNED VETERANS" FEST 
 
 High Mass in one of the churches : armed with a 
 phrase-book and a dictionary, we set out to take part 
 in the proceedings. the delusion of a phrase- 
 book ! Lives there a man who ever found in one 
 the thing he wished to say ? Who does not throw it 
 down in a rage a hundred times a month, and resolve 
 never to look in it again? And then in cooler mo- 
 ments, when you have no immediate need of them, the 
 sentences sound so sensible, so probable, that you go 
 back again to your old belief that they must be of use, 
 will certainly come in play to-morrow. As for pocket 
 dictionaries, they are almost as vexing as the phrase- 
 books. If you have knowledge enough to get much 
 good out of one, you have knowledge enough to do 
 without one, and might as well have something else in 
 your pocket. But the blessed language of signs ! For 
 that one's respect increases daily ; during this one short 
 month in G-ermany, I have come to doubt whether to 
 be a mute is so terrible a thing as we suppose. Taking 
 into account that they are usually born also deaf, and 
 thereby escape so much dreadful discord of cannon, 
 pianos, and bad English, it is by no means clear which 
 way should swing the balance of their loss and gain. 
 
 The great element of probability of our success this 
 day was the certainty that the driver of our einspanner 
 undoubtedly wanted to see the same things that we 
 wanted to see ; on this it was safe to count. By help 
 of this we saw the Festival, and never once opened 
 our phrase-book or dictionary. 
 
 Firstly, the square in which stood the church in 
 which the mass was to be. It was hung with flags, 
 and every window was festooned with long wreaths 
 of green, fastened by rosettes of black and yellow. 
 Unwillingly enough we confessed to each other that, 
 setting patriotism aside, the effect of the hated Austrian 
 colors was finer than that of blue and red. The crowd 
 was great, but quiet and grave to an inexplicable 
 degree. It seems to me, thus far, even truer of the 
 
IN SALZBURG. 
 
 97 
 
 G-ermans than of the Americans, that they take their 
 pleasure solemnly. The other day I saw forty or fifty 
 peasants at a wedding dance in a little inn, and, though 
 I watched them for half an hour, not a laugh did I see, 
 except on one or two of the youngest faces, and they 
 were laughing at us. The rest whirled slowly round, 
 with a stolid, uninterested expression which could not 
 be outdone in the Ocean House in Newport. Several 
 of the men had the comfort of cigars in their mouths,, 
 which the Newport men can't have. It seems some- 
 thing of a feat to waltz and smoke at the same time. 
 
 It was said that more than six thousand Veterans 
 had come to this Festival. I think there were almost 
 as many more of the peasants, who had come in from 
 the country to look at them. It was hard to move in 
 the streets. Country people always seem to have 
 more than the usual allowance of elbow ; and when to 
 the world-wide country elbow is added the German 
 woman's hip, the estimate of standing room for each 
 person must be made big. The men were gayer than 
 the women; truer to nature in that, I suppose, than 
 we, since in fish, flesh, and fowl we see always the 
 male with brightest colors. But it strikes civilized 
 eyes oddly to see men with huge shining silver buttons 
 on the fronts of their coats, two and three rows, bright 
 bows of green or red at the knee, and in their hats 
 feathers and flowers and ribbons,- while women are 
 wearing plain short black petticoats, and on their heads 
 either sombre black hats, high - crowned, broad- 
 brimmed, and without ornament, except a couple of 
 gold tassels , or else, still worse, a thick black silk ker- 
 chief bound tight over the whole head, low on the 
 forehead, down nearly to the eyebrows, and twisted 
 in some mysterious knot at the back, so as to leave 
 one long ear-like flap hanging down on each side. 
 Anything uglier could not be invented. It made young, 
 good-looking faces hideous ; and on old and plain ones 
 the effect was uncanny. Many of the women wore 
 3 a 
 
9 8 THE RETURNED VETERANS' FEST 
 
 round their necks broad necklaces of twenty or thirty- 
 rows of small silver beads, clasped tight in front by a 
 great buckle of colored stones and gilt. These seemed, 
 however, to be worn less for ornament than to pre- 
 vent or conceal the frightful goitre with which four 
 fifths of them were disfigured. One's first sight of a 
 goitre swelling is something never to be forgotten. 
 
 Mingling in picturesquely with the peasants from 
 the country, and the common people of Salzburg, were 
 to be seen here and there showy Austrian officers, Eng- 
 lish heads of families, with the families behind in water- 
 proof, commercial travellers of all nations, nobilities in 
 fine carriages, and American women, — to be known 
 from all the rest by their quick peering faces, and their 
 being sure to get in everywhere. Really, I think that 
 the day after Babel could not have seen on that memo- 
 rable plain more sorts of men than made up the crowd 
 in this square yesterday. 
 
 At last, by much help from many people, we got 
 into the church and a seat. A High Mass is always 
 an ordeal of endurance ^ but this one was made endur- 
 able by intervals of Mozart's music, and by the Vet- 
 erans' faces. They filled the seats, and stood in double 
 rows down the central aisle. Had I seen them in 
 New York I should have said, " From where did all 
 these Irishmen come ? " And those that did not look 
 like Irishmen looked like Yankees. Dark hair and 
 eyes were the exception ; red hair and freckles were 
 common ; and almost universal was the hard, keen, 
 overworked look which we know so well in America. 
 The more intelligent the face, the surer it was to have 
 this expression. The poorer peasants looked calmer 
 and stupid. Next me sat a barefooted boy, with a 
 heavy, unawakened face. He wore in his hat a gray 
 feather and an Edelweiss. When I made signs to him 
 that I wanted the Edelweiss, and took it out of his 
 hat, and put fifteen kreutzers in his hand in exchange 
 for it, he looked blankly at the money and at me, as 
 
IN SALZBURG. 
 
 99 
 
 if he had not common belief in his senses. But his 
 mother kissed my hand in gratitude. 
 
 At the end of the mass the organ and band struck 
 up one of Wagner's best marches, and we and the Vet- 
 erans poured out. The Veterans had the best of it 
 though, and got so firmly wedged in the square, ahead 
 of us, that before we could fight our way through to 
 our carriage, we were as tired as ever they were on 
 the fields of Lombardy. 
 
 The banners and flags were all stacked on one side 
 of the square, and made a fine show of color beyond 
 the swaying mass of the Veterans' black hats, with the 
 green leaves and feathers in them From a window 
 on the right, orators began to speak most eloquently, 
 I believe ; but I only know that they all gesticulated 
 wildly with white-gloved hands, and waited, like all 
 stump speakers, at the places where they expected the 
 Veterans to throw up their hats and cheer. 
 
 In the afternoon the performances were to consist 
 of music, cakes, and ale on the Monchsberg. This 
 sounded simple and virtuous; but how little we 
 dreamed what it meant till we saw it. Why the 
 Monchsberg — Monk's Hill — is so called I do not know, 
 unless it be because it is a continuation of the high 
 rocky ridge on which the great castle of Salzburg 
 stands ; and in that the archbishops of Salzburg lived, 
 held court, and defied their enemies for centuries. It 
 is a wonderful wall of rock, so steep that it can only be 
 ascended by flights of stairs; so broad that its top 
 spreads out into fields and valleys and groves, as it 
 were, a second story of country, hundreds of feet up 
 in the air. At its narrowest point it has been tunnelled, 
 and the tunnel is four hundred and fifteen feet long. 
 It was built by an Archbishop Sigismond, a hundred 
 years ago, and will keep him in memory so long as the 
 world stands. A clumsy stone head of him stands 
 over the entrance to the tunnel, and looks down into 
 the road, with the superfluous boast, a Te Saxa co- 
 quunter " 
 
ioo THE RETURNED VETERANS' FEST 
 
 They tell you that from bottom to top of the Monchs- 
 berg it is only two hundred and eighty steps. " 0," 
 you say gayly, " that is nothing," and spring up. 
 If they had mentioned also that the staircase is for 
 the most part steep as a ladder, and intersected by 
 long stretches of path almost as hard to climb as the 
 ladder, one could better reckon the cost of going up. 
 Also, both staircase and path are very narrow, and 
 when, as yesterday, throngs of people are coming 
 down, it adds sensibly to the fatigue of going up to be 
 obliged to swing on a pivot once in two minutes, to 
 let big German women, big German soldiers with 
 pipes, children by dozens, and men with beer casks go 
 by. We swung off in this way and let so many hun- 
 dreds pass us, that we almost thought the Festival must 
 be coming to an end. But how we laughed at our 
 want of comprehension of what a German out-door 
 Fest could be, when we first caught sight of the broad, 
 crowded plateau, and realized that the hundreds we 
 had met were only two' or three people who had to go 
 home early. I do not know how many acres full of 
 men and women there were. I only know that the 
 space they filled was so large that at the farthest end 
 of it the gay colors of the banners could scarcely be 
 distinguished, and two full bands and an orator could 
 be going on at once and not jangle with each other; 
 and yet from the higher ground the whole could be 
 seen, one great sea of good-fellowship. On the outer 
 edges of the crowd, under trees, were rows of booths ; 
 beer, brown-bread, and snaky sausages for the mass ; 
 white bread, cakes, and candies for the few ; the whole 
 hillside was settee ; greener-cushioned never mortals 
 had ; but it was too much stuffed with stone, and in 
 spite of the picturesqueness and jollity of the scene, 
 bones would ache, especially if they were withheld by 
 superfluous scruples from doing among Germans exactly 
 as Germans did, and lying down at full length every 
 now and then to rest. 
 
IN SALZBURG. IO i 
 
 The family groups sitting here were pleasant to see ; 
 father, mother, six or eight children, all drinking beer, 
 even the baby that could not speak plain, all nibbling 
 at the ends of sticks of sausage, all good-natured but 
 not talkative. 
 
 They do more thinking than their share, this Ger- 
 man nation; the world is the better for it, no doubt, 
 but if they could only borrow a laugh from Italy, it 
 would do them good. 
 
 Next to us on the hillside sat a young German, 
 evidently a mechanic of some sort, who had brought 
 his sister and sweetheart to the Fest. They had one 
 huge glass mug of beer between them, and I observed 
 that the man drank first and oftenest ; for the rest, 
 their feast was of white bread and sausage ; and they 
 munched and looked at each other, and looked at each 
 other and munched, and not a dozen times did they 
 open their mouths to speak during the two hours and 
 a half that we sat by their side, yet they looked the 
 picture of content. 
 
 The Veterans, though there were six thousand of 
 them on the ground, were lost in the crowd. Now 
 and then half a dozen of them would be seen sitting 
 and smoking together, but they formed no distinguish- 
 able feature of the occasion which bore their name. 
 Just as we were unwillingly beginning to think of the 
 stairs which lay between us and our carriage, a sudden 
 stir among the people, and much taking off of hats, 
 announced the arrival of dignitaries. 
 
 There they were, at our very elbow, and no instinct 
 had told us, — the Archduke, and several ladies and 
 officers of the court. By some magic chairs appeared, 
 and in a few minutes the group were seated in the 
 centre of a hollow square of staring faces. I never 
 supposed that divinity hedging a king could be so un- 
 dignified and droll as was the fat pompous little man 
 who went up and down before and behind, and pushed 
 the people back if they crowded up too close. Even 
 
102 THE RETURNED VETERANS' TEST. 
 
 at risk of getting a wave from his official hand, we 
 walked several times quite close to the backs of the 
 sublime people, and took our fill of looking at court 
 clothes. White muslin over blue silk, Valenciennes 
 lace, and fine white straw hats with blue crape stream- 
 ers for the women, very dainty and pretty, but just 
 such as any woman may buy in New York at Virefolet's 
 or Baillard's ; but for the officers — ah, are there else- 
 where in the world such colors as the cherry scarlet gray 
 blue, pomegranate red, and deep sea green which these 
 Austrian officers wear ? And then the fit of them ! 
 It is profane to suppose they are cut and made. It is 
 the coats that come first ; and the men are melted over 
 night and poured in in the morning. 
 
 The Archduke has light blue eyes, and a weak cruel 
 face ; I was glad he was only the Emperor's brother ; 
 I could fancy his doing deadly harm with power. The 
 women were beautiful, the first beautiful women I 
 have seen in Germany. Full into the face of the young- 
 est and most beautiful of them, the handsomest of the 
 officers puffed clouds on clouds of tobacco-smoke as 
 he stood talking with her. This universal smoking in 
 Germany is enough to cure one of all fancy for the 
 practice ; cars, dining-rooms, all made insufferable by 
 it ; and women sitting by and breathing it all in, hour 
 after hour, as if it were the wholesomest, most delicious 
 air. 
 
 We lingered till sunset; then, though nobody ap- 
 peared to be going away, we found the stairways just 
 as crowded as before with ups and downs ; until mid- 
 night, they tolcl us the Fest would last. 
 
 This morning at six o'clock, music again, and more 
 Veterans, but such different-looking Veterans from 
 those of yesterday ! Slowly they dragged along to the 
 railway-station to take the early train ; the green leaves 
 in their hats drooping and wilted, and their whole 
 atmosphere bearing that unmistakable expression, com- 
 mon, the whole world over, to " next morning." 
 
A MORNING IN THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM 
 IN THE VATICAN. 
 
 CRETE had a Labyrinth, and Rome has a Vatican. 
 I wish I knew how many times the Labyrinth 
 couid be contained in the Vatican, and if it would not 
 seem a place for plain sailing in comparison. When 
 you read in Murray that the Vatican has four thousand 
 rooms, it conveys no precise idea to your mind ; when 
 you look at the huge, irregular pile itself, which ap- 
 pears to have no particular beginning and never to 
 leave off, and to make St. Peter's look trig and tidy be- 
 side it, even then you do not comprehend ; when you 
 are told that for many years the little chapel of San 
 Lorenzo, with its solemn frescos by Fra Angelico, was 
 lost in this labyrinth, — utterly lost out of the memory 
 of man, and was accidentally discovered by a G-erman 
 artist, who had to climb in through a window, — even 
 then you are not fully alive to it. Not until you have 
 entered, and toiled and wandered for hours, trying to 
 find some gallery or chapel to which you have been a 
 dozen times, and which you proudly assured your con- 
 fiding friend you could " go straight to," do you begin 
 to realize what the Vatican is like. If you could only 
 " bark " your way, as you do in other wildernesses, 
 there would be some hope ; but, if you ever do turn 
 the same corner twice, you never know it, and the 
 more you try to remember just how you went the last 
 time, the less likely you will be to go that way. There 
 are in the guide-books plans of the Vatican. They are 
 of use, if carefully studied at home ; but once take them 
 out on the ground, after you are already a little con- 
 
io4 
 
 THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM. 
 
 fused, and you are hopelessly lost. Your bewilder- 
 ment is instantly heightened by a sense of conspicuous 
 humiliation, which is unbearable. Twos and threes, and 
 sixes, and sevens of all nations come immediately in 
 sight, walking toward and past you, — heartless Levites, 
 who know the road. Never have I found the Samari- 
 tan of the Vatican ; no, though I have sat begging by 
 the way. But I have always comforted myself by be- 
 lieving that the Levites also got lost before they had 
 gone far ; in fact, I myself have sometimes come upon 
 them, later, standing stock-still and helpless, while I, in 
 my turn, passed by on the other side. 
 
 It was on one of the rawest of the raw days for 
 which winter in sunny Italy is not, but ought to be, 
 famous, that we saw the Etruscan Museum. We had 
 walked round and round it, and over it, and under it, 
 till we had almost ceased to believe in it, before we 
 found the door. Once in, we should have known, even 
 without the inscription over the entrance, that we were 
 in the right place. On three sides of the small vesti- 
 bule lay life-size figures of terra-cotta ; a man, crowned 
 with a wreath of laurel, and two women, wearing 
 necklaces, bracelets, and rings. They were a good 
 deal chipped and knocked, these old Etrurians, and one 
 of the women must have been a sad fright in her day, 
 if her portrait were a good one ; but, true or false, high 
 or low, there they lay, three citizens of Etruria, in 
 solid shapes of stone, as big as they were when alive, 
 and more famous than they ever dreamed of being. 
 On the walls were fastened several horses' heads, 
 taken from the entrance to somebody's tomb. Among 
 the Etrurians, it seems, the horse was an emblem of 
 the passage of the soul to the other world ; from which 
 it is fair to infer that break-neck riding and driving are 
 not modern inventions. In the middle of the vestibule 
 was a great scaldino, filled with red-hot coals ;. and the 
 two custodi of the museum stood over it, blue and 
 shivering, trying to warm their hands. Of all flimsy 
 
THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM. Io5 
 
 pretences, the scaldino is the flimsiest and most pre- 
 tentious. Why a huge kettle of coals, which glow red 
 to the eye, and breathe hot and choking to the lungs, 
 cannot keep you warm five minutes, is unexplainable ; 
 but it does not. You rub your hands over them with 
 a vigor which would warm you anywhere, and you 
 might as well spare yourself the unwholesome stifle 
 of the scorched air. 
 
 When the custodi saw us take from under our cloaks 
 a big green bound book, and walk off independently 
 into the first chamber on the right, they roused a little 
 from their torpidity, and followed us to see what man- 
 nes of people those might be who needed none of their 
 help. Ah ! we were luckier people than they knew, 
 for the book was " Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of 
 Etruria." Dennis's description of this museum is so 
 accurate as to seem marvellous when we are told that 
 it was written entirely from memory, — the Pontifical 
 Government, for some reasons best known to itself, 
 not allowing any memoranda to be made in the 
 rooms. 
 
 The first chamber is filled with cinerary urns, or ash- 
 chests. Undertaking must have been a more cheerful 
 trade in those days than in these, and have offered 
 openings for fine artistic talent; in fact, these carved 
 ash-chests looked so little like things belonging to burial, 
 that it was hard to believe that they had not been 
 meant originally for some other purpose. There was 
 an endless variety of them, — square chests, oblong 
 chests, round chests, oval chests, big chests, little chests, 
 high and low and wide and narrow chests, — carved 
 figures on all the lids and on the sides, some of them 
 mythological signs, some of them allegorical represen- 
 tations of the last journey of the inhabitants of the 
 chest, in which the soul, looking in nowise unlike the 
 body, is seen, wrapped in a toga, sitting upright astride 
 a horse, which is led by a frisky little demon. On 
 shelves above the chests were heads of the same terra- 
 5* 
 
106 THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM. 
 
 cotta, portraits of the dead. There had been handles 
 to the lids. Some of the heads of little children were 
 very sweet and lifelike ; one, especially, looked so like 
 a baby I know, that I started, and wondered in my heart 
 if really just such another darling had laughed and 
 played on earth two thousand years ago. At the end 
 of the chamber was a large chest, in which had been 
 buried the ashes of a husband and wife, who were 
 perhaps fortunate enough to be " not divided " in 
 their death, as their full-length figures are carved on 
 the lid, lying fondly clasped in each other's arms. 
 
 In the centre of the next room stood a huge sar- 
 cophagus, of great interest as an antiquity, carved and 
 carved and carved again with scenes from the stories 
 of Clytemnestra, and Orestes, and the Theban Brothers, 
 and from thence all the way back to the brothers Cain 
 and Abel, one would think. There are minds which 
 take a species of anatomical, statistical, archaeological 
 interest in this, sort of thing ; and will tell you, down 
 to the last joint of Agamemnon's little ringer, what it 
 all means. But I confess I listen to their accounts with 
 a fatiguing mixture of reverence and incredulity. On 
 shelves in the corner of this room were some little 
 stone huts, not more than ten inches high, which in- 
 terested me far more than the great historical sar- 
 cophagus. They were two ash-chests of the very oldest 
 forms, made to imitate the shape of the low, round 
 huts of skins, stretched over cross-poles, in which the 
 Latins lived. They made you think of beehives. Ashes 
 and bits of burnt bone were in them still. They were 
 found, with many other rare things, in a big jar, hid 
 away in one of the Alban Hills ; and the people whose 
 dust they held died before Kome was a city. 
 
 After one more room of terra-cottas, urns, statues, 
 and bass-reliefs, you come to the rooms of vases. There 
 are four of these rooms, and the vases are arranged on 
 pedestals and shelves. The first thing you do is to re- 
 solve that you will learn the names of the different 
 
THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM. 
 
 107 
 
 shapes. In a few minutes you persuade yourself that 
 you know, and will remember, which is an amphora, 
 a pelioe, a calpis, and a patera. For that one day you 
 will ; but in a week all that you will know will be that 
 the amphora, and the calpis, and the pelice are all beau- 
 tiful kinds of jars, and that the paterae and pelices are 
 the shapes which lucky people who have them use for 
 card-receivers. 
 
 The rarest and most beautiful vases are on single 
 pedestals, in the centre of the rooms. Mythological 
 and historical scenes are painted on all of them. One 
 of these has a picture of Ajax and Achilles playing at 
 the game of " Morra," which is played all over Italy 
 to-day. As I write, some handsome Albanese men are 
 playing it under my window, and shouting out the 
 numbers so loudly that I cannot, do what I will, help 
 keeping run of their game. It looks stupid enough to 
 one not born to it. Two men thrust out their right 
 hands at each other, shutting up some fingers and 
 opening others. Each man calls out on the instant 
 what he thinks the whole number of extended fingers. 
 If both are right or both are wrong, nothing is counted ; 
 but if one only is right, it counts one for him. Nobody 
 would suppose that a mistake could ever be made in 
 calling the number; but it is played with lightning- 
 quickness, and there could not be so much excitement 
 in it if blunders were not frequent. On this vase Ajax 
 calls out " Four ! " and Achilles " Three ! " (the words, 
 printed in Greek letters, coming out of their mouths,) 
 and both the heroes look as intent as if they were 
 planning a battle. 
 
 Some of the scenes are very comic, and belong to all 
 time. For instance, a short-legged fat man, looking up 
 hopelessly at his lady-love, sitting in a high window, 
 and a kind friend appearing in the distance, bringing a 
 ladder to his assistance. This was none the funnier 
 when it was meant to show Jupiter serenading Alc- 
 mena, and Mercury running to help him up, than it 
 
xoS THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM. 
 
 would be as a passage from the life of our Mr. Fal- 
 stafF. On another vase is a picture of a tall boy, with 
 a hoop in one hand and a cock in the other. His 
 whole expression shows that he has stolen the cock, 
 and is trying to make off slyly with it, — which is a 
 hard thing to manage, as he has no clothes on. Strid- 
 ing along behind him comes a man, either the owner 
 of the cock or the boy's teacher, with a long switch in 
 his hand, from which there is plainly no escape for the 
 young thief. 
 
 In the last vase-room are many curious goblets, — 
 some with great eyes painted on them; some with 
 " Hail, drink ! " which seems a good and friendly motto 
 to set on the rim of glasses in a hospitable house. But 
 now we have reached the ninth room, fullest of won- 
 ders. To begin with, what is this ? A small iron bed- 
 stead ? Exactly that. And I dare say generations of 
 single Etrurians slept on it. Finally, it came to be the 
 bier-bedstead for the last long sleep of somebody ; and 
 in his tomb at Cervetri it was found. Monsignore 
 Regolini and General G-alassi discovered this tomb ; and 
 it has ever since been known by their names. Anti- 
 quaries believe it to be three thousand years old ; so it 
 is possible to please one's self with the fancy that the 
 great warrior or priest who was buried in it died of 
 having eaten too much peacock at the first supper 
 given to iEneas after his arrival in Italy. He must 
 have been the best-dressed man at supper, if he wore 
 the magnificent gold ornaments in which he was buried. 
 Here they are, outshining all the other gold and silver 
 array in the large glass case in the centre of the room, 
 — a broad gold breastplate, embossed with twelve 
 bands of figures, sphinxes, goats, panthers, deer, and 
 winged demons ; another ornament for the head, made 
 of two large oval plates, fastened together by a broad 
 band, embossed in the same way, with smaller plates 
 and fringes to hang down behind, bracelets several 
 inches broad, ear-rings several inches long, all matching 
 
THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM. 109 
 
 the breastplate. No worker in gold to-day can equal 
 the shaping and chasing of these ornaments. In an inner 
 room of this same tomb were found also other brace- 
 lets, armlets, wreaths, chains, ear-rings, and brooches, 
 
 all of the same exquisite workmanship; and it is 
 
 supposed that some woman of high rank, possibly a 
 priestess, was buried there. One wonders whether it 
 were honesty or superstition which kept tombs so safe 
 in Etruria, and involuntarily fancies the fate of such 
 treasures if buried in public cemeteries to-day. 
 
 It is hard to leave this room ; but at the end of a 
 day we should not have seen all. On the walls hang 
 rusty metal mirrors, fans, candelabras, shields dented 
 in many fights, visors, axes, javelins, cuirasses, spears, 
 and all shapes and sizes of armor. On shelves are in- 
 numerable and inexplicable tools and instruments, — 
 forks, and pins, and ladles, and strainers, and pails, and 
 jugs; in cases by the windows are pounds and pounds 
 of odds and ends, — coins, and weights, and clasps, and 
 little metal bulls, and fishes, and cats, and daggers, and 
 chains, and bits of bone, looking for all the world as 
 if they had been emptied out of some boy-giant's 
 pocket. Here is a curious stone bottle, — an ink-bot- 
 tle, they say, — on which some idle scholar scratched 
 off a bit of his primer, " Ba, Be, Bi, Bo, Bu," in old 
 Pelasgic letters. G-oing to school must have been as 
 stupid then as now. "Here is a pair of clogs ; yes, 
 real Etruscan clogs, bronze, filled in with light wood. 
 No. 4-| at least, and much worn by some enterprising 
 woman who went out in all weathers in Veii. Here is 
 the brazier by which she dried her feet when she came 
 home, and the shovel and tongs and poker lying across 
 the top, just as she kept them. The tongs are on 
 wheels and end in snakes' heads, the shovel-handle is 
 a swan's neck, and the poker or rake finishes off with 
 a human hand. 
 
 Near these is an oval silver casket, most exquisitely 
 carved, found in a tomb at Vulci. The handle is made 
 
no THE ETRUSCAN MUSEUM. 
 
 of two swans, one bearing a boy and the other a girl, 
 holding on by their arms round the swans' necks. In 
 this were found a little hand-mirror, two broken bone 
 combs (0 unneat woman of Vulci), two hair-pins, an 
 ear-pick, and two small pots of rouge. 
 
 Three things more, and we have finished our glance 
 at this room, — a Roman war-chariot, found on the 
 Appian Way, and looking triumphant still ; a great arm 
 and dolphin's tail, of bronze, cast up by the sea at 
 Civita Vecchia. 
 
 The next room is hung with paintings, exact copies 
 of the painted walls of the tombs of Tarquinii and 
 Veii ; and the next and last is the " Chamber of the 
 Tomb," a long, narrow, low, dark room, fitted up in 
 imitation of the common Etruscan tombs, — stone 
 couches on three sides, bronze and pottery hanging on 
 the walls and standing about, — an exact reproduction, 
 they say, of a real tomb. But it gives you no thrill, 
 probably makes you smile, and remember things you 
 have seen in panoramas. The real presences have been 
 in the other rooms. 
 
 We went out through the Gallery of Inscriptions, 
 which is one of the solemn places. On the left hand 
 the tombstones of the early Christians, on the right 
 those of their enemies. It is touching to read these 
 records of the first triumphs of Christianity's first faith 
 over the grave. " A sweet soul, who sleeps in peace,'' 
 is an inscription constantly recurring. Among the Pa- 
 gan inscriptions are no such comforting words ; only 
 grief and gloom. 
 
 In the court-yard the Pope's gay guards were flaunt- 
 ing up and down like enchanted tiger-lilies, making ready 
 for his Holiness to take such modest airing in a close 
 red coach as befits the representative of Jesus Christ ; 
 the beggars buzzed up round our ears ; the scorching 
 sirocco blew in our faces ; and in a few moments we 
 had bridged the gap of twenty centuries, and taken up 
 again our own little thread of to-day. 
 
ALBANO DAYS. 
 
 THERE are but seven in a week. That is their only 
 fault. How clever those gentlemanly fellows, 
 Pompey and Domitian, were, to put their villas on this 
 hill ; and as for the cruelties said to have been commit- 
 ted in Domitian's amphitheatre, a few rods from our 
 hotel, we have decided that there is some mistake about 
 that. In Eome one can believe in all tales of old tor- 
 tures — and new ones too, for that matter. Even when 
 the larks sing loudest in the Coliseum the stones cry out 
 louder ; the air reeks with sirocco vapors, and seems 
 not yet purged from the odor of blood. But in the 
 pure, sun-flooded air of this hill, which must always 
 have been full of marvellous delights, it is impossible to 
 believe that bad men ever did bad deeds. Whatever 
 they might have been in Rome, they were virtuous as 
 soon as they got here. I cannot fancy Domitian's ever 
 doing anything worse than having a few larks killed for 
 supper ; and I am sure he spent most of his afternoons 
 lying on purple thyme on the shores of the Alban 
 Lake (as we lay yesterday), perhaps slyly reading the 
 good sayings of the poor Epictetus whom he had ban- 
 ished. We read yesterday what Epictetus said " con- 
 cerning those who seek preferment in Rome " ; and, as 
 we looked over at the hot, smoky domes and spires, it 
 seemed hard to believe that any one going thither, even 
 if he were " met by a billet from Caesar,' ' could choose 
 to stay. 
 
 Albano is 1,250 feet above the sea, says Murray. That 
 may be true, say we ; but we know it is much more 
 than that above Rome. Have we not been looking 
 
II2 ALBANO DAYS. 
 
 longingly at it for months, set high on the side of the 
 Alban Hills ? From every height in Rome to which 
 we wearily climbed we saw it, triumphant with banners 
 of clouds, and crowned with green of forests, saying as 
 plainly as tower could say, " Come up here, and I will 
 do you good." When the watchmen in the old Sara- 
 cen towers saw the pirate-ships coming over the Medi- 
 terranean, they sounded the alarm, and all the people 
 in the plains fled into the mountains for safety. To-day 
 the towers are in ruins, and no corsairs sail from Africa 
 across the sea ; but the sirocco, a more deadly foe, comes 
 in their stead, hotter and hotter with each day of May, 
 and wise souls escape to high places. 
 
 Of all those within easy reach of Rome, Albano is 
 best. It is only an hour off by the ears. And even at 
 the railroad station you are met by beauty and good 
 cheer — a garden full of roses, and white thorne, and 
 wall-flowers, and ranunculus; and a station-master 
 who, if he treats you as well as he treated us, will 
 give you a big bunch of all, and look hurt and angry 
 when you offer to pay him. From this garden to the 
 village of Albano, two miles and a half, over a good 
 road, up, up, up ! the air grows purer minute by min- 
 ute ; the Campagna behind sinks and stretches and 
 fades, and becomes only another sea, purpler and more 
 restless-looking than the broad band of the Mediterra- 
 nean into which it melts. On each side are vineyards, 
 looking now like miniature military encampments, with 
 play-guns of cane stacked by fives and threes, and little 
 soldiers in green going in and out and playing leap-frog 
 among them, so fantastic are the baby-vines in their first 
 creeping. Olives, gray and solemn, sharing none of the 
 life and joy, most pathetic of trees. The first man who 
 saw an olive-tree must have known that there had been 
 G-ethsemane. Never else could such pathos have been 
 put into mere color ; they could never have been so 
 ' gray before that night. Still up and up ! It is a long 
 two and a half miles. The bells tinkle slowly at the 
 
ALB A NO DAYS. n 3 
 
 horse's head. The driver's neck bends suspiciously to 
 one side ; he is half asleep. You would not be sorry 
 if the horse and he dozed off together, and you stood 
 still for an hour to look. On the right hand is a 
 valley garden, an old lake-bed, set full of vines and fig- 
 trees and fruit-trees in full flower, and wheat, and all 
 the numberless and exquisite-leaved '"greens" which 
 Italy boils, eats, and manages to grow fat on. We find 
 them beautiful everywhere but on the dinner-table. 
 High on the crater-like side of this garden is the tower 
 of Ariccia, looking like a gray bird which had just lit 
 on its way up to Monte Cavo. Between Ariccia and 
 Albano is a sharp ravine ; and the sensible Pius IX., 
 some twenty years ago, built a fine stone viaduct across 
 it, toward the cost of which we pay half a franc each 
 time we drive over. But only blind men could grudge 
 the money. From every point it is a most beautiful 
 feature in the landscape, with its three tiers of arches ; 
 and from its top you look down two hundred feet into 
 the valley garden on one side, and two hundred feet in- 
 to the tops of a forest of trees on the other. You follow 
 the valley garden till it loses itself in the Campagna ; 
 the Campagna, till it loses itself in the Mediterranean, 
 which glistens in the sun twelve miles off; and you 
 hear coming up from the forest the voices of thrushes 
 and nightingales and cuckoos and larks, till you believe 
 that there must be a bird-fancier's shop in one of the 
 old gray houses joining the bridge. To stand on this 
 bridge for an hour is to see Italian country-life in drama. 
 The donkeys, the men, and the women of Albano and 
 Ariccia and G-ensano act their little parts, and are gone. 
 We stayed late at this play last night. The wardrobes 
 were poor, but the acting was nature itself; such pan- 
 tomime, such chorus ! Priests in black, looking always 
 like a sort of ecclesiastical crow, such silly solemnity in 
 their faces, so much slow flap to their petticoats and 
 the brims of their hats ; barefooted monks, rolled up in 
 cloaks of faded brown — they also have their similitude, 
 
Ii 4 A LB A NO DA VS. 
 
 and look as the olive-trees might if they gathered their 
 rusty skirts around them and hobbled out for a walk ; 
 workmen, going home from the fields, with odd hoes 
 and pickaxes over their shoulders; women, with the 
 same hoes and pickaxes, going home from the same 
 work in the same fields, and carrying also, firm-set on 
 their heads, bundles, loads of wood, little wine-barrels 
 or water-jars, or anything else which it can happen to 
 an Albanese woman to need to carry. No one gives 
 herself any more trouble about her barrel, or jar, or load 
 of wood, than if it were a second head, which she had 
 worn all her life. They talked and laughed as if it 
 were morning instead of night. They were not tired. 
 Watch them at what they call work, and you will see 
 why. As the sun sank lower the crowd of laborers 
 thinned ; the farmers, one degree better off, came rid- 
 ing on donkeys. Two men and a boy on one donkey ; 
 four large bundles of wood and one woman on one 
 donkey ; four ]arge casks of wine, a bundle of hay, two 
 chairs, some iron utensils, and two small children on 
 one donkey. the comic tragedy of donkey ! the 
 hopeless arch of their eyebrows, the abjectness of their 
 tails, and the vicious twist of their ankles ! Nobody 
 can watch them long without becoming wretched. 
 Israelites, coolies, and negroes, — all they have died of 
 misfortunes ; but the donkey is the Wandering Jew of 
 misery among animals, and Italy, I think, must be his 
 Ghetto. 
 
 Before we reached the hotel we had come upon an- 
 other drama, in the street, — a lottery drawing; prize, 
 two hens. If it had been two thousand scudi, there could 
 not have been much more excitement. Fifty chances 
 had been sold. The street held its breath, while a store- 
 keeper dropped the counters one by one into a box, 
 held by a rosy boy, mischievous enough, but too young 
 to cheat. Then the boy put in his little brown fingers, 
 and drew out one : " Thirty ! " Then the street broke 
 out into chatter for an instant, guessing and betting 
 
ALBANO DAYS. 
 
 "5 
 
 what would come next; then held its breath stiller 
 than ever. " Thirty-one ! " " Thirty-one ! " No " Thirty- 
 one " answered. " Thirty-one " was sick at home, or 
 had married a wife, and could not come ; and the street 
 grudged him his two hens all the more that he was not 
 on hand to carry them off. The hens screamed and 
 scuffled ; the storekeeper crammed them back into a 
 coop on his window ; and the street went back to its 
 work, i. e. to sitting about, smoking, and knitting, and 
 selling saddles and fish and shoes and salad and hand- 
 kerchiefs and donkeys and calico and wine all along 
 its doorsteps, never by any chance being under roof, so 
 long as there is daylight. 
 
 We took our sunsetting at the Yilla Doria. It is a 
 princely thing of the rich Romans to throw their beau- 
 tiful villas open to the public. Could it be safely done 
 in America ? I fear our people are_ not gentle enough, 
 and have too much money to spend on cake and pea- 
 nuts. Here no harm comes of it. In the Villa Doria 
 are ilex-trees which are a kingdom in themselves. It 
 would not seem unnatural to make obeisance to them. 
 They stand in groups, making long vistas, high arches, 
 locking and interlocking their branches, their trunks 
 looking as old as the masses of ruins among them ; and 
 the ruins belonged to Pompey's walls. At sunset the 
 sun slants under and through these ilexes ; the purple 
 and wine-colored bands of the Campagna and sky be- 
 yond seem to narrow closer and closer round the hill, 
 and flocks of birds wheel and sing. In the Yilla Bar- 
 berini, higher up, is a great field of stone-pines, stately 
 as a council of gods. No wonder that Theodore Par- 
 ker, when he saw a stone-pine, asked that one be set 
 on his grave. No tree grows which has such bearing 
 of a solemn purpose. Such morning and evening as 
 this make a day in Albano. Words give but glimpse 
 and no color. For other days there are other villas, 
 and fields, and ruins, tombs of Pompey and of Aruns, 
 Lake Nemy and its village, G-ensano, and Marino, and 
 
u6 ALBANO DAYS. 
 
 Kocca di Papa, all within easy reach and always in 
 sight. There are four lovely winding avenues of trees, 
 called Gallerie, where you drive for miles under arches 
 of gray ilex as grand as stone, and where the oldest 
 trees are propped by pillars to save their strength and 
 keep them alive. There is Monte Cavo, the highest of 
 the Alban Hills, one thousand feet above Albano, where 
 there used to be a temple, and Julius Cassar went up to 
 be crowned one day. To think that an English cardi- 
 nal dared to pull down the ruined temple, and build a 
 convent and church in its stead ! 
 
 Some of the roads are very smooth and good, others 
 are rough and narrow. For these you must take don- 
 keys, and go perhaps two miles an hour ; but, going so 
 slowly, you will have great reward in learning the faces 
 of the wayside flowers and getting into fellowship with 
 the lizards. Fifty different kinds of flowers I counted 
 in one afternoon, all growing wild by the road ; and the 
 other day, on the road to Marino, I made acquaintance 
 with two lizards, who were finer than Solomon in all 
 his glory, and had a villa with a better view than the 
 Barberini. 
 
A SUNDAY MORNING IN VENICE. 
 
 SCOTCH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH ! " There 
 were the words, in white letters on a blue 
 ground. We rubbed our eyes and sprang up in our 
 gondola. Yes, we were in a gondola, and we were on 
 the Grand Canal in Venice. But there were the 
 words, and no mistake ; white on blue, so plain that 
 he who rowed might read. "Scotch Presbyterian 
 Church ! " We had seen, unmoved, the palaces of 
 Doges, Titians, Marco Polos, Lord Byrons, and Dic- 
 tator Ruskins ; we had looked the Lion of St. Marks 
 in the eye, and the statue of St. Theodore out of coun- 
 tenance ; but for this we were not prepared. A Pres- 
 byterian meeting-house on the Grand Canal ! The 
 resolute little sign held our eyes with a fascination 
 amounting almost to an uncanny spell; the distant 
 hand-organ seemed droning off into a sleepy Dundee ; 
 our good Luigi's features seemed changing into some- 
 thing more stern than their wont ; the measured sweep 
 of his oar took on a solemn significance ; and when 
 the legless beggar who haunts the Grand Canal rowed 
 up by our side, we should not have been surprised if, 
 instead of his usual whine of " qualche cosa," he had 
 struck up "Life is the time to serve the Lord." 
 " Scotch Presbyterian Church ! " The letters defied 
 perspective, and looked bigger and bigger as we glided 
 away. 
 
 " Luigi, is there really a church there ? " 
 
 " yes, yes, Signora ; every Sunday." 
 
 " "Very well. Next Sunday we will go to it." 
 
 Luigi looked glad. The Sunday before, when we 
 
Ii8 A SUNDAY MORNING IN VENICE. 
 
 went out to take our evening row, he asked with timid 
 interest if we had been to mass in the morning. On 
 hearing that we had not, his face clouded ; and I think 
 that after that his gentle soul had been troubled by 
 misgivings as to our future. But now he was reassured. 
 If we could not be good Catholics, it was something 
 that we had a worship of our own. Perhaps, after all, 
 we should not be left forever in purgatory. There was 
 real liberality in the approbation, softened perhaps by 
 pity, with which he smiled on us, as we stepped out of 
 our gondola at the picturesque low stone door, over 
 which was the sign " Scotch Presbyterian Church." 
 
 We were too early by an hour. Even Scotch Pres- 
 byterianism had so far accommodated itself to the air 
 of Venice as to postpone the hour of morning service 
 till half past eleven. The door was shut. What should 
 we do ? By way of making the antithesis of things 
 sharper yet, we might hear a Roman Catholic mass 
 first. 
 
 "Luigi, we will go to St. Mark's." Luigi looked 
 gladder still. Surely his " forestiere " were in the 
 right path to-day. His oar dipped fast, and in a few 
 minutes we had slipped into the little sombre canal 
 which creeps under the Bridge of Sighs, and were 
 walking off, in the sunshine of Luigi's patronizing 
 smile, through the court-yard of the Doge's Palace, into 
 the great solemn shadows of St. Mark's. It was 
 crowded, — the first time I had seen it so ; but even 
 the stir and hum of so many living men and women 
 did not seem to give it a breath of the atmosphere of 
 to-day. Each man seemed, as soon as he entered and 
 knelt down, to be transformed, as by a magician's 
 touch, into an enchanted figure which had been pray- 
 ing there for centuries. The priests moved to and fro ; 
 the incense films rose, ' and floated, and faded; invisible 
 bells tinkled sharply. It was only a common, low mass, 
 but it seemed like the worship of some old spell-bound 
 race doomed to kneel, and pray, and swing censers till 
 
A SUNDAY MORNING IN VENICE. 119 
 
 gome predestined deliverer should come, possibly the 
 next hour, possibly not for a thousand years, to set 
 them free. Perhaps it is strange that the worship of 
 the Roman Catholic Church should ever seem like 
 anything less than this. Surely her millions are spell- 
 bound, waiting the deliverer who will one day come. 
 Involuntarily I looked up at the giant apostles and 
 saints frescoed in blue and crimson and gold high over- 
 head ; and I half thought that they stirred, as if the 
 hour was near. No ; it was only a misty sunbeam 
 stealing around pillar after pillar, and lighting up their 
 stone faces with quivering colors of life. After the 
 mass was over, a fair, gentle-faced priest pattered out 
 from some dark recess behind the high altar, and, 
 standing in front of the railing, read bans of matrimony 
 for many men and women. 
 
 They were really alive then, and they married and 
 were given in marriage, these weird Venetians who 
 made up the spectacle at which I had been looking. I 
 saw also that a young girl nudged her neighbor and 
 smiled scornfully as one name was read. Ah, they 
 had also envies and scandals ! From these, too, must 
 come a deliverer. The incense will not help them, nor 
 the naming of saints, nor the keeping of days ; only 
 the Lord himself from heaven. As I walked slowly 
 out among the kneeling figures, I thought of Paul in 
 the Athenian temples, and what glorious thrills must 
 have warmed his blood when he called out his watch- 
 word of Christ in the midst of their altars. 
 
 When we again reached the room of the " Scotch 
 Presbyterian Church" the minister was reading the 
 first hymn. The room was small, with three chintz- 
 curtained windows opening into a green and sunny 
 garden. I much suspect the desk of having been only 
 a temporary arrangement of chairs and tables, with 
 a dark tapestry flung over them. Every seat was 
 filled ; there were, perhaps, forty men and women, 
 earnest-looking, plain people, English and Americans. 
 
120 A SUNDAY MORNING IN VENICE. 
 
 We sat down just outside, in a small anteroom, of 
 which one door opened wide into the sunny garden 
 and the other on the G-rand Canal. In the garden, on 
 my right, birds sang riotously ; on the canal I could 
 see gondolas and great black barges constantly going 
 up and down. Before me -stood the young minister, 
 reading, with his odd Scotch accent, that good verse of 
 the Bible, which says that we must bear one another's 
 burdens. As he read it, it sounded " Bayre ye one 
 anoother's buddens " ; but the doctrine was none the 
 worse for the brogue. Just as I had fairly delivered 
 myself up to the enjoyment of the whole scene, I was 
 touched on the shoulder, and an elderly man, having 
 somewhat the bearing of a Western congressman, 
 said : " Ma'am, are these the American services ? " 
 
 There was an emphasis on the word " American" 
 which suggested that he had the Fourth of July — 
 stars, stripes, fireworks, eagle, and all — in his pock- 
 ets. I strangled a wicked impulse to reply, even under 
 the minister's very face, that I did not know what 
 "American services" were, and answered: "I only 
 know the sign above the door is Scotch Presbyterian 
 Church." 
 
 In aloud, resentful whisper he rejoined : " I was in- 
 formed that the American services were held at the 
 house of the American Consul." All this time his 
 family stood waiting in the rear — mother, two young 
 misses, a boy fifteen, and a dear, sturdy little baby-boy, 
 possibly three years old. I replied again, as gravely as 
 I could : " There is no American Consul in Venice at 
 present. The English Church service is held in the 
 house of the English clergyman." He turned away 
 and strode out, the family procession following. No 
 worshipping under foreign flags would this patriotic 
 family do. The American service or none! The 
 earnest young minister went on with his Bible-reading, 
 and I had almost forgotten the interruption, when lo ! 
 a stir at the door, and there they were again, — the 
 
A SUNDAY MORNING IN VENICE. 12 i 
 
 discomfited patriots returning crestfallen, after I know 
 not how much research and consultation, — ready at 
 last to make the best of Scotch "services," since 
 American could not be found. 
 
 The mother had, I thought, a sweet and gentle face ; 
 and, as she took the baby in her lap, I prepared myself 
 for an hour of delight in watching them. Alas, what 
 a mistaken hope ! The baby was restless. Who would 
 not be, for that matter, with the tempting garden and 
 singing-birds on one hand, and the fairy spectacle of 
 the boats and the water on the other ? Moreover, the 
 mercury stood at eighty degrees, or higher : only by 
 help of much fanning did the grown-up people keep 
 still. What was a baby to do ? Of course he tried to 
 slip down and run out; and of course, before long, he 
 began to fret and whimper. At last she rose, took him 
 by the hand, and walked into the garden. My heart 
 gave a bound of joy. " 0," thought I, " kind, sensi- 
 ble mother ! She will sit in the garden with him, and 
 let him play." 
 
 "0 mamma! me be good, me be good!" came 
 down the garden-alley in those unmistakable tones of 
 terror which are never heard from the lips of any 
 children except those whose nerves have had the 
 shock and the pain of blows. All the sunlight seemed in 
 that instant to die out of the fair green place. But I 
 said to myself, "Poor darling. He will escape one 
 whipping at least. She will never dare to whip him 
 here." Mistaken again. In less than a minute there 
 came from the distance that sharp, quick scream which 
 means but one thing ; once, twice, three times, — then 
 all was still. In a few minutes more they returned ; 
 the poor baby subdued into a sort of hysterical silence, 
 worse to see than violent crying, his cheeks crimson, 
 and his eyes full of tears. I buried my face in my 
 hands, and tried to take comfort in remembering how 
 many friendly diseases there are which carry little 
 children to heaven. The words of the sermon 
 6 
 
122 A SUNDAY MORNING IN VENICE. 
 
 sounded to me like inarticulate murmur; now and 
 then came the refrain, " Bear ye one another's bur- 
 dens." How I wished I could bear that baby's ! For 
 perhaps one half-hour he sat perfectly still ; but, at the 
 age of three, memory is short and animal life is strong. 
 He had a splendid physique, full of nervous overflow ; 
 it was simply a physical impossibility for him to sit 
 still long. He began again to make struggles and im- 
 patient sounds. Again she took him up, this time 
 with impatience and irritation in her manner, and led 
 him into the sunny garden. Louder and more pite- 
 ous came the cry, " mamma ! me be good, me be 
 good ! " and the poor, sturdy little legs held back with 
 all their force as she dragged him down the walk. I 
 could hear no more. I fled through the opposite door, 
 and sprang into our gondola so quickly that Luigi came 
 running up with alarm and inquiry on his rugged face. 
 In my excitement and indignation I found even Italian 
 language enough to tell him what had driven me from 
 the church. " Ah, it was very terrible. No wonder 
 the signora could not bear it. Now he (Luigi) had 
 four children, one little girl only a year old ; and 
 never, no, never, did he strike them. He always talked 
 with them ; never a blow, — no ! " 
 
 Ah, polite and courteous Luigi ! Six months' obser- 
 vation of the ways of Italian fathers and mothers 
 made it hard for me to believe that his children led 
 lives of such exceptional peace. The Italians never 
 entirely " grow up " themselves ; and they are with 
 their children much as children are with kittens — af- 
 fectionate and cruel by turns. But it was at that mo- 
 ment an unspeakable comfort to me to hear Luigi tell 
 his sympathizing lie. 
 
 When the services were ended, I watched with 
 morbid eagerness to see the baby once more. As the 
 gondola of the patriotic family rowed away, I saw the 
 poor little fellow's flushed face lying, weary and list- 
 less, on his father's shoulder. All day it haunted me. 
 
A SONDA Y MORNING IN VENICE. 1 23 
 
 I could not shake off the fear, so well do I know that 
 type of parent, that he had, after he reached the hotel, 
 a third whipping, — such a one as is called in fiendish 
 satire "a good whipping." Poor baby! Three whip- 
 pings and a Scotch Presbyterian service in one fore- 
 noon ; and he is only three years old, and has at least 
 eight or nine years more to live under the lash. Poor 
 baby! 
 
 Venice, Italy, Juno 1. 
 
THE CONVENT OF SAN LAZZARO IN 
 VENICE. 
 
 THE longer one stays in Venice the more of a 
 magnet the Lido becomes, and the surer one is to 
 row thither daily. Its low line looks one minute like 
 a mirage, the next like firm and pleasant land; one 
 day it is gone, and the next morning back in its place 
 again; and all the while you know that, shifting and 
 shadowy as it seems, it is really the one solid bit of 
 genuine earth which Venice owns — her life-preserver, 
 so to speak, without which she would not keep her 
 head above water through a single storm. The Adri- 
 atic pounds away at the outer edge of it, macadamizing 
 the beach in pink and white with broken shells, but it 
 gains no ground. The quieter sea on the inner side 
 is at work just as industriously, engineering for the 
 harbor defence, sifting and piling the sand which hidden 
 currents bring, night and day, from the feet of the 
 Alps. They come so overloaded that they spill by the 
 way ; and, in consequence, there is no straight road to 
 any island in all the Lagoons. Suddenly, without any 
 warning, you find yourself running aground on sand- 
 banks, and have to row many an extra mile to get 
 round them ; and, what is more surprising still, at sun- 
 set are to be seen men walking about in all directions, 
 apparently on the Water. There is no miracle in it, 
 however. These Peters sink only half-way to their 
 knees ; and are buoyed up by no greater faith than that 
 they will on the morrow sell at a good price, to Vene- 
 tian fishermen, the poor sidling crabs which they are 
 scooping up by handfuls on the sand-banks. 
 
THE CONVENT OF SAN LAZZARO. 
 
 "5 
 
 But when one sails Lido-ward, no marvels of men 
 walking on water, no hindrance of unexpected mud 
 countries to be coasted, no glories of color in the sky, 
 — no, not even when a day is setting, — can long with- 
 hold his eyes from the Convent of San Lazzaro. Love- 
 liest of all lovely islands in the Lagoons, it seems, in 
 some lights, to be floating, and rising, and sinking on 
 the smooth water, like a great red lily, with gray bat- 
 tlement calyx folding about it, and a fringe of green 
 beneath. Then one stray petal flutters off in the wind ; 
 that is the fiery flag of the Sublime Porte, with its 
 pale waning crescent. The dwellers on San Lazzaro are 
 subjects of the Sultan. Then a soft bell-note swings 
 out from the slender bell-tower on the left ; it is the 
 hour for vespers. The dwellers on San Lazzaro say 
 prayers after the fashion of the Latins. 
 
 But neither the Sultan's yoke nor the rule of the 
 Latin Church casts any shadow of burden or weariness 
 over the faces of the monks of San Lazzaro. Such 
 peaceful contentedness I have never seen, except in a 
 child's eyes, as beamed in the smile of the brother 
 who welcomed us, and introduced us to the Egyptian 
 mummy who (should one say who, or which, of a 
 mummy ?) occupies the place of state in one of the 
 three fine library-rooms which are shown to strangers. 
 He took us a little by surprise, — the mummy. We had 
 not looked for him in an Armenian convent. But, 
 with the exception of his features, he was handsome ; 
 and the bead coverlid in which he was tucked up, and 
 the painted box he journeyed in, were very fine. One 
 could not help wondering, in looking at him, what his 
 next transition would be, and if He did not get out of 
 his glass case at night and study Armenian by star- 
 light. Nowhere could he do it better than in these 
 libraries, whose windows look out over rose and fig 
 trees to the sea, and whose shelves are loaded with the 
 rarest Armenian manuscripts. 
 
 Some of the illuminated copies of the Bible are very 
 
I2 6 THE CONVENT OF SAN LAZZARO. 
 
 rare and beautiful. One of the most beautiful of all, 
 though not the oldest, was written and illuminated by 
 one man, probably the work of his whole lifetime ; but 
 his name is not even known. Another one, very old 
 and rare, once belonged to an Armenian queen ; and 
 the monk showed to us with great reverence a para- 
 graph in it which was written by her own hand. They 
 have their share of devotion to royalty, even these 
 simple-hearted monks; for on the table in the first 
 library-room, where the visitors are requested to write 
 their names, we found a separate book for the names 
 of kings and queens and nobilities. In it we saw the 
 somewhat cramped signatures of poor Maximilian and 
 Carlotta. Lord Byron's autograph occupied a still more 
 distinguished place, being framed by itself and hung 
 in the window. It was written both in English and in 
 Armenian ; so he made that much progress during the 
 months that he lived and studied at San Lazzaro. The 
 table at which he wrote is shown, and the monks ap- 
 pear to regard his having lived with them as an honor. 
 This struck us as a singular inversion of the true order 
 of things ; Lord Byron seeming to us the person hon- 
 ored by the arrangement. 
 
 "We saw the refectory and the kitchen, both as spot- 
 lessly neat as if they belonged to an establishment of 
 Shakers. A huge black cat in the kitchen had become 
 so thoroughly imbued with the monkish view of wo- 
 men that he sputtered savagely at sight of our party. 
 "Poor Pussy," in the gentlest of feminine voices, pro- 
 duced no effect on him, except to set his back still 
 higher in the air. 
 
 In the printing-room six lay-brothers were busily at 
 work running off the sheets of a translation of iEschy- 
 lus into Armenian. In the cool stone stables twenty- 
 seven Swiss cows were eating their fresh clover, mowed 
 that morning on the Lido. In the mouth of a great 
 artesian well, under a thatched straw roof, were floating 
 twelve pails of rich cream and milk, ready to be sold 
 
THE CONVENT OF SAN LAZZARO. 
 
 127 
 
 that evening to the Hotel Danielli, in Venice. In the 
 pleasant, airy school-room, eighteen Armenian boys 
 were studying away, — and hating it, I suppose, like 
 boys of any other nation. In chambers here and there, 
 which we might not see, were learned fathers, studying, 
 translating, writing, and planning, all for the instruction 
 of the Armenian people. In one chamber, most sacred 
 of all, of which our guide spoke in lowered tones, was 
 an old lay-brother, one hundred and two years old, — 
 • not dying, but yet not quite living ; too feeble to walk ; 
 waiting with his eyes fixed on the Celestial Mountains, 
 and listening for the feet of the messenger with the 
 token. In the walled gardens were all manner of 
 pleasant things growing, — figs and beans, pomegran- 
 ates and artichokes, peas, wheat, and maize, and olean- 
 ders, roses, lemons, and oranges. Under the school- 
 room windows was the garden of the pupils, in which 
 each boy has his own bed. G-ood boys have flower- 
 seeds or roots given them as rewards. One lucky 
 fellow had twenty-one kinds of pansy in his garden. 
 
 Eound all this peaceful, beautiful life stretched the 
 stone-walls, — not like walls, but sheltering arms. 
 Outside the soft water seemed also to be circling and 
 sheltering ; and no sound, unless of a passing oar, in- 
 terrupted the quiet. We longed to stay for the rest 
 of our lives, and drink cream, and translate good books 
 for the benefit of the Armenian nation; and only 
 wished that we had been wicked men and written 
 poetry, so that we could make a precedent of Lord 
 Byron's having been taken to board there. When we 
 said as much, or nearly as much, to the gentle, smiling 
 brother who had guided us over the convent, he 
 warmed up, in kindly response, and begged me to 
 come again the next Sunday and attend the service in 
 the chapel. 
 
 This we did, and it was the crowning pleasure of our 
 glimpses of San Lazzaro. In our first visit we had 
 been mere strangers, to whom were civilly afforded the 
 
128 THE CONVENT OF SAN LAZZARO. 
 
 ordinary facilities for seeing the place. In our second 
 we were invited guests, and now the gracious courtesy 
 of Eastern hospitality surrounded us. While we were 
 sitting in the library, and looking again at the words 
 which the Armenian queen had written thousands of 
 years ago, there entered noiselessly a venerable man, 
 who also might have come, it seemed to me, from quite 
 as far back as her day, and who brought in his hands 
 such refreshments as, I make no doubt, she set before 
 strangers in her court; rose-leaves steeped in syrup 
 till the syrup had become rose and the rose was trans- 
 parent as syrup, of this one teaspoonful for each guest ; 
 the teaspoons resting on tiny glass plates, which took 
 a soft, red tint from the pulpy rose-leaves. In the 
 centre of the tray, a dish of sweets for which I have no 
 name; small square cakes, which might have been 
 honey arrested and made solid by some magic means, 
 and almond meats set thick in the luscious juice. This 
 was all, except glasses of cool-filtered rain-water, al- 
 most as great a rarity as the magic honey-cakes and 
 the rose-leaf syrup. "Oh! where were these delicious 
 sweets made?" said we. "By Armenian ladies in 
 Constantinople. They send them to us every year," 
 replied the monk. " And you, what do you send to 
 them in turn ? " said I, — " figs and pomegranates 
 from your garden?" "O no; nothing but letters," 
 laughed the monk, with a shrug of his shoulders which 
 could not have been as worldly wise and cynical as it 
 looked. 
 
 The Armenian liturgy is one of the most solemn in 
 the world. We had read carefully the English transla- 
 tion of it, so that we were not wholly at loss in listen- 
 ing to the sonorous ring of it in the Armenian tongue. 
 The boys chanted with sharp inflections and unusual 
 intervals, which gave to the whole a wild and not 
 unmusical cadence. But it was impossible not to be 
 diverted from the service by the faces of the brothers. 
 Without an exception, they were at once scholarly and 
 
THE CONVENT OF SAN LAZZARO. I2 g 
 
 childlike, — rare faces, which one would note and ad- 
 mire and trust anywhere, the very realization of the 
 apostolic injunction to be wise as serpents and harm- 
 less as doves. 
 
 After the services were ended, we went into the 
 little bookstore room, and looked over the specimens 
 of their printing, and translation, and photography. 
 They have done the Emperor Napoleon the honor to 
 translate his. history of Caesar. By its side lay a trans- 
 lation of Paradise Lost, handsomely bound, and dedi- 
 cated to Queen Victoria. We bought several pam- 
 phlets : one a brief history of their society, from which I 
 suppose I ought to have half filled my letter, and told 
 all about its being founded in Constantinople, in 1700, 
 by Mechitar, a learned Armenian ; and thence moved 
 to Modon, in the Morea, in 1702 ; then broken up by 
 the war between the Venetians and Turks in 1715, and 
 moved to the island of San Lazzaro in 1717, where it 
 has been thriving and prospering ever since, and is 
 now rich, owning lands in Padua and Rome, and bank- 
 stock in Venice, not to mention the twenty-seven 
 Swiss cows. It is doing a great work in the gratuitous 
 education of Armenian youth, the translation of stan- 
 dard books into the Armenian language, and the distri- 
 bution of them throughout Asia. I bought also an 
 odd little book, a collection of popular Armenian songs, 
 translated into English, from which I copy one. We 
 see that the things of the earth speak the same words 
 to poets under all suns. 
 
 THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WATEE. 
 
 Down from yon distant mountain 
 
 The water flows through the village. Ha, 
 
 A dark boy came forth, 
 
 And washing his hands and face, 
 
 Washing, yes, washing, 
 
 And turning to the water, asked: "Ha, 
 
 Water, from what mountain dost thou come, 
 
 my cool and sweet water, HaV " 
 
 6* I 
 
I3 o THE CONVENT OF SAN LAZZARO. 
 
 "I came from that mountain 
 
 Where the old and the new snow lie one on the other." 
 
 "Water, to what river dost thou go, 
 
 my cool and sweet water, Ha V " 
 
 " I go to that river 
 
 Where the bunches of violets abound, Ha! " 
 
 " Water, to what vineyard dost thou go, 
 
 O my cool and sweet water, Ha V " 
 
 " I go to that vineyard 
 
 Where the vine-dresser is within, Ha! " 
 
 " Water, what plant dost thou water, 
 
 my cool and sweet water, Ha'? " 
 
 u I water that plant 
 
 Whose roots give food to the lamb ; 
 
 The roots give food to the lamb, 
 
 Where there are the apple-tree and the anemone." 
 
 " VVater, to what garden dost thou go, 
 
 O my cool and sweet water, Ha? " 
 
 " I go into that garden 
 
 Where there is the sweet song of the nightingale, Ha ! " 
 
 " Water, into what fountain dost thou go, 
 
 my cool and sweet little water ? " 
 " I go to that fountain 
 
 Where thy lover comes and drinks ; 
 
 1 go to meet her and kiss her chin, 
 And satiate myself with her love." 
 
 Just as we were ready to leave, our friendly host — ■ 
 for not knowing whose name we shall never forgive 
 ourselves — came running in from the garden with a 
 large bouquet of roses, and verbenas, and orange blos- 
 soms, and said, in his pleasant broken English, " Again 
 you will come?" "Yes," I said; "again I will come, 
 if there be a next summer." 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Nice, Monday, November 23, 1868. 
 
 DEAR PEOPLE: Nineteen clays since I sailed 
 away, and this is the first minute when I could 
 look far enough ahead to venture to try to tell what I 
 had seen. It has been a whirl and a maze. On the 
 whole I like it, though I would rather not be out of 
 breath. But that I can't help till I get to Rome ; so 
 if my letter has the sound of one who has just run up 
 hill, and cannot wait a moment before beginning to tell 
 his news, you will be patient, and put in your own 
 colons and commas where I leave mine out, which will 
 be all along. 
 
 Of the voyage you don't care to hear. The smooth 
 ones are pretty rough, I think, and the rough ones 
 must be unspeakably awful. This was a smooth one, 
 they said, and also they said that I was not at all sea- 
 sick. I suppose they must know, and so I give you 
 their version of it. Every day we sat on deck; the 
 waves were high, emerald at top, and broke into foam- 
 falls to right and left; the flocks of gulls followed us 
 all the way, and I almost found out the secret of their 
 flying, I watched them so constantly. We ate a great 
 deal oftener and a great deal more at each time than 
 we ought ; we had hot-water jugs at our feet at night ; 
 and the stewards and stewardesses said to us twice a 
 day that it was a most beautiful voyage, and fine 
 weather as " 'eart could wish"; and so we came to 
 Liverpool. I did not get the storm I hoped for, and 
 of which the third mate said to me, two days out, 
 " We '11 horder one hup for your hespecial be'oof, mem." 
 
I3 2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER 
 
 Now that it is over, I am rather sorry I was not ittshec 1 
 to a mast in a gale. 
 
 When I saw the mail put ashore at Queenstown, it 
 began to dawn on me what a big place the world must 
 be. Eighty-seven huge bags of mail, half of them 
 too large for a man to stagger under ; and when they 
 were piled up on the deck of the tug. they made a small 
 hill. Even little Belgium had three big bags. 
 
 As we were going into the Liverpool harbor, we met 
 the Russia coming out, and waved our handkerchiefs 
 out of good-fellowship to anything or anybody bound 
 for America. In London I found out that Professor 
 and Mrs. B. had sailed in the Eussia ; so if I had only 
 known, my signal would have had great meaning. 
 
 Liverpool looked very old and musty, as if it had 
 been finished centuries ago and put away : solid beyond 
 anything I ever saw; such piers, such posts, such 
 foundations! Great Normandy horses, with shaggy 
 pantalettes of hair around their hoofs, seemed to be 
 stalking about in all directions, drawing tons of things 
 on drays, with wheels too broad to roll. To the 
 Washington Hotel we were to go for dinner. Wash- 
 ington himself, eleven feet high, done on glass, with a 
 stained border of allegory gone mad, confronted us 
 as soon as we entered the door. I suppose it is in- 
 tended as a delicate bait for Americans, this enormous 
 transparency. There may be souls so patriotic as to 
 thrill at sight of so much Father to their country. . We 
 were profanely irreverent, and never stopped laugh- 
 ing at it while we stayed. It was only by accident that 
 I discovered, in time to secure the afternoon train to 
 London, that my ticket, which I supposed all right for 
 Paris, must be changed at an establishment in Water 
 Street, Liverpool, for something else ; so P. and I 
 jumped into a hansom, and drove at such a pace to 
 find the man and the spot ! P. had always been afraid 
 to get into a hansom, from a vague instinct that it was 
 not the thing to do it ; but, emboldened by my vaga- 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 33 
 
 bond indifference, she yielded to her long-suppressed 
 desire, and off we dashed. Do you want to know 
 what a hansom is like ? I '11 tell you exactly, and 1 
 think myself that it is not just the thing for " dames 
 seules" to drive" about in, but I'm very glad we did 
 it. It is a Franklin fireplace, with cupboard doors in 
 front, swung between low wheels, with a high-chair 
 fastened to it behind. In this sits the driver with his 
 coat-tails flying and his elbows out, far above your 
 head, and drives by reins which, to your bewildered 
 eyes, appear to go nowhere and communicate with 
 nothing. You jump in ; the cupboard doors fly to- 
 gether, and away you go at a rate which would make 
 Broadway stare. If I drew pictures for Young Folks, 
 I 'd draw a hansom in shape of a larkspur-blossom, 
 with a wasp for a horse, and a cricket rearing itself up 
 behind to drive. Well, we did it all, got our luggage 
 weighed, and bribed a guard at the railroad station 
 with a shilling, and he took care of us as if we had 
 been his grandmothers. He was such a gorgeous crea- 
 ture in uniform, that it seemed to me very audacious to 
 offer him a shilling. I should as soon have thought of 
 giving thirty-seven and a half cents to General Scott ; 
 but, dear me, how he appreciated it ! A burly old Eng- 
 lishman came up, and made as if he would get into the 
 carriage with us ; unblushingly our champion told him 
 the seats were all taken, and hustled him off to another 
 car. Then he came back, and without a smile, said as 
 deliberately as if he were recounting the most praise- 
 worthy action, " I 've got 'im into another car, but I 
 donno as 'ee '11 stay there." 
 
 Before we knew it, we had glided out of the station •, 
 they have such a marvellous way of beginning with their 
 engines, noise being the one thing forbidden. Only 
 three stops we made between Liverpool and London 
 and we were only five hours on the road. It was so 
 soon dark that I had but glimpses of the fields and 
 houses. The houses were odd-looking ; so much more 
 
134 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 color than ours ; gray with red and white bricks in bor- 
 ders up and down the sides. The fields were as green as 
 if it had been September, smooth and tilled and ditched 
 to the last possible point of cultivation. Even in those 
 two hours of daylight, I ached to see a tangle in some- 
 thing, or a rough corner. The railway station in Lon- 
 don was as quiet as possible. I am perfectly bewil- 
 dered to conceive how they manage to have such quiet. 
 There must be as many trunks and as many people, 
 but nobody screams and nobody bangs*, no cabman 
 comes near you; you find your luggage all in a pile by 
 itself, sorted out as exactly and alphabetically as if it 
 were clean clothes from the wash ; and there you are, 
 the whole thing over I should think that when a for- 
 eigner is first confronted by a mob of New York hack- 
 men with their whips, he would be positively frightened. 
 But I shall never get through at this rate. I must lay 
 down the rule in the outset not to say what I think. 
 At nine o'clock we were going up the steps of Batt's 
 Hotel, 41 Dover Street. Piccadilly. We had tele- 
 graphed for rooms, so we were met and welcomed, 
 which is always pleasant ; and by such a stylish-look- 
 ing dame, in a black silk gown, with a gold chain 1 
 Another eminently respectable dignitary lit our fires; 
 she wore a Honiton lace cap. A third, also in a lace 
 cap, lugged up our bags. If a preponderance of our 
 own sex could make us reputably established, we were 
 on the pinnacle of propriety. 0, how blessed it 
 seemed to have the floor quiet under our feet, and no 
 wriggling or twisting screw in the cellar, no plash of 
 water on our bedroom walls ! The first house in 
 which one sleeps after a sea- voyage must seem like a 
 Paradise, I am sure. Nothing will seem to me again 
 so home-like as those smutty bedrooms and that dingy 
 parlor. Great blazing fires of cannel coal in every 
 room, and the air filled with the smoke of them! 
 They are "'too fillin' at the price," cosey as they look at 
 first. All day you wipe your face, and at night you 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 135 
 
 start back from it in the glass. The streets are smoky. 
 the bread is smoky, the pillow-cases are smoky. I 
 wonder the word " white " does n't die out of the lan- 
 guage. We saw no sun till we came away ; — it was 
 always just before light ! 
 
 We had our dinner and breakfast in state in our own 
 sitting-room, and a waiter in such a dress-coat, with 
 such a white lace necktie, and such gold studs of the 
 size of a pea ! He was too fine to be reproved for 
 never remembering the kind of bread we ordered. 
 Sunday morning P. and I took a cab. and drove 
 three miles to South Place Chapel, Finsbury, to hear 
 my old friend Mr. Conway preach. Strangely enough, 
 it chanced that he gave that day an account of the 
 meeting of the Free Eeligious Associations, which met 
 in Boston last May. It was like overtaking a tidal 
 wave, to have journeyed to this little English chapel in 
 time to hear those grand words of John Weiss and 
 Robert Collyer, echoing on this shore! 
 
 In the evening we went to hear Spurgeon. This 
 was a great disappointment. The Tabernacle was 
 worth going to see, — eight thousand people with in- 
 tent upturned faces, — but when at least six thousand 
 of those eight are coughing incessantly, and oy\\j one 
 man to out-tale the coughing, the result is uncom- 
 monly unpleasant. It is a scramble to get a seat, but 
 a worse scramble to get out. We did not stay. We 
 tried to look as if we were faint, but I fear we got 
 quite too red, what with the elbowing and the disgust 
 Spurgeon may be eloquent sometimes; he certainly 
 was not eloquent that night. He was simply a great, 
 strong, coarse, earnest man, who said commonplace 
 things with huge emphasis of fist and voice. He called 
 the scribes " spiritual mosquitoes," and said that when 
 Christ asked them certain questions, he " had 'em there." 
 This is all I remember of what he said r except that 
 his prayer lasted twenty minutes. 
 
 Monday was a day never to be forgotten. From 
 
36 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA FELLER. 
 
 ten until five P. and I drove about that great city, 
 peering into book-shops on Paternoster Row (no 
 Christina Rossetti could I find in twelve shops, — had 
 to go to her publishers) ; getting water-proof cloaks, 
 and walking through Westminster Abbey, all in a 
 breath ; palaces ; Houses of Parliament ; dinner at 
 Blanchard's : mob and orator in some great square, — 
 how they did scream and toss their hats, and the police 
 ordered one brougham to move along ; the famous 
 Mrs. Brown's millinery shop, where hats went by doz- 
 ens and guineas by scores ; Regent Street ; Trafalgar 
 Square; all in a smoke, and all so cold, so raw, we 
 shivered like Boston people in March ; home after dark 
 to dinner ; and that was my day in London. 
 
 Tuesday, the train to Folkestone, — ten till one, — 
 woods all yellow and brown, — hedges black and filmy- 
 looking as we whirled by. Folkestone, picturesque old 
 town, built up and up, high gray stone houses; on 
 the wharf, a motley crowd, as the newspaper-writers 
 say, — English. Scotch, Irish, Yankee, and French, — 
 and the hideous green Channel leering triumphantly 
 out at us all from under a fog. It was rather ugly. A 
 drizzle, almost a rain ; people scrambling for floor-room 
 to he down in the cabin ; before we had been out ten 
 minutes, sailors coming up from below with stacks of 
 unpleasant crockery bowls, which they put down here 
 and there by twos and threes in everybody's reach ! 
 How could the stomach of any but a blind man resist 
 that? We clung to a settee on deck; pitying men 
 who sailed the boat took off their coats and covered 
 us up ; and it only lasted two hours ; then we were 
 at Boulogne. This was France. Drolly enough, the 
 Frenchiest-lookmg thing I saw on the hill was a little 
 dog, which behaved so comically about his barking and 
 running and stricking up his tail, I fancied he would 
 have looked foreign to me if I had seen him in America. 
 His every hair seemed electric. 
 
 We walked to the railroad station, and a jabbering 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 J 37 
 
 French boy carried our bags. Behind us and before us 
 clattered the fishermen's wives, with their wooden 
 shoes, down at the heels and slipping off at every step. 
 I thought horses were coming directly upon me, and 
 jumped to one side ; three of these women ran by laugh- 
 ing ! We lunched in a buffet, where the big cook was 
 all in white, — white paper cap, white linen apron, — ■ 
 things astonishingly good to eat and hard to pronounce. 
 .Then more railway, five hours of it, and we were in Paris. 
 Here the same astonishing quiet, but a tedious waiting 
 till the luggage was sorted. Presently a tall man, with 
 " Interpreter' 1 on his hat-band, appeared. Even N., with 
 all her excellent knowledge of French, was glad to see 
 him. Only one little trunk, of all our eight packages, 
 was opened by the Custom House officer, and he 
 politely looked another way while he lifted the lid. 
 Several ornamented and caparisoned creatures helped 
 us off, and we rattled away, luggage and all, long before 
 some of the parties who had men to look after them, 
 had got out. " 9 Rue Castiglione, — whatever time by 
 night or day you arrive, come straight there," S. C. 
 had written to me. So there we went, and at the 
 head of the eighth (I think) flight of stairs, there she 
 stood waiting to welcome me ! P. and N. drove on to 
 the Hotel Windsor, where their rooms had been en- 
 gaged by telegraph, — and this was the beginning of 
 Paris! I began to scent the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil before I had been in the house five minutes. I 
 found my friends up to ears in clothes, and whereas I 
 had been harassed with thinking they were waiting 
 for me all this time, no, they were not ready to set 
 off for Eome yet ! More " things " were yet to come 
 home, and we could not possibly get off till Thurs- 
 day night. Well, thus it moved on again to Friday 
 morning ; and those two days in Paris cost me, I 
 won't say what, because it was so very little intrinsi- 
 cally. Only I and my own conscience know how 
 much more it was than I ought to have spent. Paris 
 
i3« 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 is just what I thought it was, — New York grown up, 
 graduated and with a diploma ! I do not care if I never 
 see it again ; certainly I did not see much of it then. 
 It was absolutely necessary to rest all day Wednesday. 
 Thursday I looked at the outside of some of the lions, 
 and the inside of some of the stores. It is evident 
 that people ought never to buy anything in Paris with- 
 out a Paris resident to go with them and show them 
 how. None of the things that we have bought are cheap. 
 I had great fun out of not speaking French, — for in the 
 midst of all the humiliation of it, it is funny. The 
 conversation with my chambermaid — I talking English 
 and French, arid she French ! — somehow by dint of 
 fingering a good deal, we made out. The ignorance of 
 the English language among these people is really 
 melancholy. But it is a consolation sometimes to tell 
 them face to face what they can't understand ! The 
 woman who brought home my hoop said, eying my 
 humble attire with ill-concealed contempt, " Madame 
 will need some other things, will she not ? " " Heaven 
 forbid ! " said I, shaking my head, and adding " Non, 
 non," — P. sitting by convulsed with laughter at the 
 woman's stare. French women who have things to 
 sell never stop trying to make you buy. She kept 
 on — I dare say she did really pity me for having to 
 wear such clothes, — " Madame would certainly like 
 a ruffled petticoat pour le voyage" " Get thee behind 
 me, Satan! " I said, bowing and smiling, and pressing 
 her towards the door. I think she crossed herself when 
 she got outside ! So did I too ! What becomes of con- 
 scientious convictions on the subject of dress, what 
 becomes of exact calculations as to the proper expen- 
 diture of a limited income, in the Paris air, I don't know. 
 I should like to see the woman who could go through 
 Paris, and not buy a gown. the shape of the things ! 
 their dainty last touch ! and they pile up their tempta- 
 tions so ! You must have gloves ; of course it is simple 
 duty to go to the glove store and buy them. Ah, what 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TEA VELLER. 
 
 J 39 
 
 do you see just under your elbow ! — neckties, — just a 
 few, — blue, with point lace and seed pearls, — just the 
 ravishing thing for some brown-haired darling in Amer- 
 ica — and it would almost go in a letter, — and it is 
 only twelve francs ! How you pat yourself on the 
 head if you get out of the shop without buying it — ■ 
 
 Genoa, Friday Evening, November 27. 
 
 Right into the.middle of that last sentence, my dears, 
 broke the decision that we must set out for Genoa in 
 <an hour. We had waited all day Monday for sunshine, 
 and half of Tuesday, and it was foolish to wait longer. 
 I have always heard Nice called a " garden." It is the 
 moistest, coldest, muddiest garden I ever saw, and has 
 the worst fireplaces! The flowers, to be sure, are like 
 a carnival in every direction, — roses of all colors, 
 oranges, aloes, all the flowers I ever saw in a con- 
 servatory, all blossoming at once, apparently, in and 
 out of season, — but how they stand the cold fog, I 
 can't imagine. They did n't seem to shiver. I suppose, 
 now, I shall never tell yon how we rode from eleven 
 o'clock, Friday morning, till ./we Saturday, p. m., to get 
 from Paris to Nice, and did n't die of it ; nor about the 
 American Consul, Judge A., who came to see us Sunday 
 evening, and told us volumes of gossip about the old 
 dethroned kings, and unprincipled princesses and Rus- 
 sian countesses who pull each other's ears in Nice; 
 all about the poor Prince of Monaco, who sold his soul 
 to the Devil to pay his tailor and keep his little handful 
 of kingdom, making it the legalized gambling-ground 
 for all Europe. (Afterward, we looked down on it 
 from the high hills on the Cornice Road ; it looked 
 like a tidy enough little peninsula, with no elbow-room 
 for either saints or sinners.) Monday morning the 
 kind Judge came again and walked us about to have 
 one glimpse of the Public Gardens and the fine Pro- 
 menade Anglais. This lies along the shore of the sea, 
 
I4 o ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 and all fashionable people walk there in fine clothes 
 every afternoon. It is a concentrated Bellevue Ave- 
 nue, dear Newporters, and all the Nice people (not the 
 nicest, I suppose) go away and let their houses just as 
 you do. Every other villa has its sign up, " a louer" 
 and it seemed positively odd not to see " apply to 
 Alfred Smith" below it. I can't tell you about all this, 
 nor about these three last days on the Cornice Road, 
 because the latter is too long, and I have no time here 
 to write. The last three days have been to the eye 
 what the fuli orchestra is to the ear. Even from 
 divinest music one must rest. I looked away from the 
 sea, the olives, the crags, the snow-covered hills, and 
 studied the little roadside flowers till I could look up 
 again. Sweet-alyssum grows like grass all along the 
 road from Nice here. 
 
 Now I shall warm myself before a fire in a cave 
 under a marble mantel-piece and go to bed. I don't 
 think I should have any more realization of being 
 lodged in an old palace, if I knew what particular 
 Gruelph or G-hibelline had toasted his feet on this very 
 slab, than I have now. Such a fresco is over my head, 
 — such a distance as my walls reach up ! I go about 
 in the dark with a candle like an old woman in a great 
 dark barn with a lantern. I get up on a chair to step 
 into my bed. There is a tapestry-hanging which con- 
 ceals a door ; the door is just behind my bed, — it 
 won't lock, and has already been opened once by mis- 
 take. If this is n't splendor, what is ! We are so gay 
 with it all, we don't know what to do with ourselves, 
 and we are unpacking our pm-cushions and slippers as 
 if we meant to stay a week, instead of two days To- 
 morrow, palaces, churches, jewelry ! Monday we move 
 on towards Rome, — just how we don't know, but as 
 fast as we can. 
 
 Nobody knows half so well as I do how stupid this 
 letter is. But when you come to try at it yourselves, 
 you '11 find that it is harder than you think. There 13 
 so much too much to say. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 1 ^ 1 
 
 Rome, Monday, December 14, 1868. 
 
 DEAR SOULS: Now we are at housekeeping, 
 and this is my house-warming letter. Didn't 
 we have a time of it to get a house at all ? 0, how 
 easy it looked at first! Every other house has up 
 its sign, " Camere Mobiliate " : we were not at all 
 ambitious; all we demanded was to have sun in 
 all our rooms, three bedrooms, and a fire in each 
 bedroom. What could be simpler ? How our spirits 
 went down, down, as we climbed up staircase after 
 staircase, and found dark rooms, no stoves, or else a 
 kitchen where the Padrona must have the privilege 
 of coming to cook "just a little trifle two or three 
 times a day " ; or else a rent of one hundred and forty 
 dollars a month. Ah, at the end of the first day we 
 were very meek people, and at the end of the second 
 we were abject' There can't be many things in this 
 world so bewildering as looking after lodgings in Rome. 
 In the first place, the door into which you enter, at 
 the beginning, looks like the very dirty and neglected 
 entrance to some old warehouse on a wharf, in a city 
 where there has not been any business for a hundred 
 years. You stand there a minute, and say, " dear!" 
 (especially if you have already been up five or six 
 hundred steps that morning,) " I do wish they would 
 tell on their cards how many rooms there are ! " Per- 
 haps we shall find somebody on the third floor who 
 can tell us. Not a bit of it ; up flight after flight you 
 crawl ; on each floor is one great grim iron door, with 
 a ring and a chain hanging outside. You have no 
 business to pull the ring on any floor but the floor 
 with which your business is; and if you did ; they 
 
I42 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 wouldn't know anything about any floor but theii 
 own. Each floor is its own house, as much as if it 
 were six miles off from any other floor. When you 
 get up to the one hundred and seventh stair you would 
 be so glad to sit down, but you can't. They don't put 
 either chairs or benches in these grim passages; 
 and the stairs are all stone. You can't sit on them, 
 not if you are half dead ; so you lean up against the 
 wall and get your black cloak all white and cobwebbed, 
 while you wait for the mysterious chain and ring, 
 which you have pulled, to bring forth an answer. 
 Then the great door creaks and opens, and you get 
 breath enough to ask if they have furnished rooms to 
 let, and if there are three bedrooms, with sun and fire. 
 After a little while you learn that it makes no differ- 
 ence whether they have or have not; they always 
 say, " Si, si, signora." Before you learn this you go in 
 quite gayly, and think you are all right. Then you see 
 one great bedroom with two beds, and one little one, on 
 neither of which the sun has apparently ever shone ; 
 a fine parlor, with stands of artificial roses under high 
 glass cases, no end of china teacups sitting around ; 
 usually about twenty frightful pictures on the walls ; 
 in the dining-room there is a great display of glass and 
 china on the table ; and the Padrone, if he is at home, 
 and the Padrona, and the one or two or three daugh- 
 ters, all down at the heel, and down at the neck, and 
 huddled up somehow with pins and strings in the mid- 
 dle, and looking like rag-men and rag-women, begin 
 to talk, all at once, with their tongues and their shoul- 
 ders and their fingers ; and they tell you that the sun 
 shines at some impossible hour of the day, at some im- 
 possible angle, into all three rooms ; and that two beds 
 in one bedroom are exactly the same thing as two 
 bedrooms with a bed in each ; and that their linen and 
 their silver and their furniture are " so much, so much," 
 and " so fine, so fine " ; and they smile and show whita 
 teeth, and their eyes are such ? lovely brown-black, 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. I4 ^ 
 
 that you are in some danger of believing them ; and 
 then if you say that you must have a " free kitchen," 
 which means simply that they are not to have the use 
 of your tea and sugar and bread, they shrug their 
 shoulders, and look at each other, with such an ex- 
 pression of injury, that you feel like an awful sneak 
 yourself, — just as if you had stolen all your life; 
 and for all that, you know that you are the honest 
 one, and they steal, and you know the rooms won't 
 do at all, and you edge along to the door ; and then 
 the faces of the Padrone and the Padrona and the 
 daughters all grow black, and the white teeth go down 
 their throats apparently, they disappear so absolutely 
 and forever ; and as you fairly step out of the door, if 
 you wish to know the true character of the people you 
 might have lived with, turn around quickly and look 
 at the faces which have settled down, behind your 
 back ! This is what we did for two days and a half. 
 We exhausted the list which friends had given us; 
 then we drove slowly up and down the streets where 
 it would do to live (by the way, there are not more 
 than a dozen of them in all this great city), and looked at 
 the signs, and whenever we saw one which we thought 
 promised the least chance of success, out we got, and up 
 we climbed. In one place we would find a parlor so 
 sunny, so comfortable, that we could not leave it ; then 
 the bedrooms were wrong ; in another the bedrooms 
 could be made to answer, but the parlor was a den, 
 and cold as a barn ; then we were taken with great 
 love of a view, or of the blankets, or of the china and 
 glass, which we would have liked to take away with 
 us, to use in the other house, which we still firmly be- 
 lieved was awaiting us somewhere. Then we came up- 
 on one quite fine and comfortable and sunny, and then 
 the rent would be at least one hundred and fifty dol- 
 lars a month, and we would meekly say, " Troppo," 
 and go away, followed by pitying looks between the 
 landlord and lady. By the way, I never thought be- 
 
I44 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 fore of the composition of the word " land lord and 
 lady " : no wonder they are so lordly in their ways. 
 At last we found our house. It was my inspiration, and 
 I take great credit to myself; high up on the Via 
 Quattro Fontane (four fountains), just opposite the 
 Barberini Palace, on the corner opposite Miss Hosmer's 
 house. Think of that ! Aren't we in luck? Well, 
 it happened oddly that the good people, being modest, 
 had stuck out " Piccolo appartamento " on their sign. 
 
 Longingly I had looked at the corner twice, as we 
 
 neared it, and said to S , " I suppose there is no 
 
 use in looking at anything which an Italian calls in 
 the outset ' small.' " 
 
 " no," she said, " not the least." 
 
 So it came to be near night on the third day, and 
 we were still homeless. We were driving back to our 
 hotel and passed this house. Still the same little sign 
 which had seemed all day to have a magic fascination 
 for me ! I said, '' Let us look at it ; it will do no harm." 
 A strange sort of delight took possession of me as 
 I first trod on the stairs ; they were stone, but clean ; 
 the flights were short, and the halls were comparatively 
 light. Such a beauty as opened the door for us 1 Ah, 
 if you could see her ! Just now she came to bring me 
 an egg beaten up in milk, and as she set it on the table, 
 and said, " Signora," the grace and gentleness of her 
 motion, the sweetness of her voice, — ah me, I believe 
 I had tears in my eyes to look at her. I never saw 
 just such a human creature before ! Well, the beauty 
 opened the door (she is only a maid of all work, this 
 beauty, our Marianina), and then she called the Padro- 
 na, who came, having the same sweet, gentle ways, 
 but looking so ill, so ill. She, poor soul, has had the 
 fever. The rooms were charming, — a parlor on the 
 southeast corner, two windows ; a dining-room, two 
 bedrooms, and such a kitchen, resplendent with 
 copper. But that I'll tell you about later All 
 except the third bedroom, this was our place. How 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 145 
 
 we looked at each other, and went back and forth 
 through the dear six rooms (there was one great dark 
 room), trying to make them count more than they 
 would. I began to feel like the "fifth kitten," and 
 think I might as well be drowned. dear, only three 
 out of you dear twelve will have the least idea what 
 " fifth kitten " means ; never mind, I can't help it, per- 
 haps you can find out. Suddenly I said, " Why need 
 we have a dining-room ? We are not grand ; we 
 shall not entertain any but our own sort; we can have 
 dinner in the parlor, and the dining-room will make a 
 
 good bedroom." So it did. So it does ; and L 
 
 sleeps in it, and here we are ! And now I wonder if 
 I can tell you how the rooms look, and if you will 
 care if I do ; at any rate, it is Eoman housekeeping, so 
 you might like to know how we do it. Ah, if you 
 would all come and do likewise ! I don't believe it is 
 in the least " as the Romans do," though ; poor souls, 
 I have a lurking doubt whether even the Dorias and 
 the Borgheses are half as comfortable as we are. The 
 two Romans who have come to see us go away out 
 into the northeast corner of our little parlor to sit 
 down, and look with dismay at our great wood-fire, and 
 say, " 0, thank you, I will sit here ; we do not have 
 fires." " I think them exqueesetely beautiful," said 
 Signor L , the other day, meaning to be very po- 
 lite, "but I find them very hot! " I really think he 
 supposed we kept our fire for ornament, and endured 
 the discomfort of the heat as the price of the pretty 
 display. But this is not telling you about the house ; 
 only, from this you will see that we have wood-fires. 
 Ay, that we do, in the parlor and in two of the bed- 
 rooms ; mine crackles at this moment as lustily as if it 
 were of Vermont maple, instead of little round sticks 
 of I don't know what, but something quite worthless 
 and small, which I amuse myself with by building it 
 up into cob-houses on the hearth, and then the fire 
 trips up from side to side and in and out, like an acro- 
 7 J 
 
f 
 
 6 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 bat. Well, well, now I will be exact, and describe a 
 thing or two. You see this old Rome goes to one's 
 head, and it is not easy to keep a steady hand. 
 
 Firstly, comes our parlor ; it is cosey, and that is a 
 rare thing here ; it is long rather than square, and it 
 has one window to the northeast and one to the east ; 
 we make much of the east window, for out of it we 
 see such lovely red- tiled roofs, and a bit of an orange- 
 garden high up above the roofs, and a whole cypress- 
 tree; into it comes straight sun, and that is worth 
 solid gold, inches deep, for every inch that it covers 
 on our carpet. We don't spread down any Cranford 
 papers ! not we ! Our northeast window looks out un- 
 terrified on the Barberini Palace. There is the lovely, 
 sad Beatrice, who will be my friend in rainy days ; I 
 have not sat with her yet, because there has been no 
 rainy day when I dared to go out ; and on the pleas- 
 ant days there is always some artist or other copying 
 her, which I should so dislike that I could not see her 
 well. Clouds. I think, could not cut off so much light 
 as one man. 
 
 At first our parlor had so much glass case and stack 
 of flowers and marble-top table, that we did not know 
 what to do ; now it has only two marble-topped affairs, 
 and they are covered with books ; then there is a mar- 
 vellous square dining-table which can be stretched into 
 any size, and I firmly believe also into any shape ; I have 
 n't yet seen it in an octagon, but I expect to. As soon 
 as I have learned the Italian verbs, I shall attack this 
 table and find out how it goes. Then we have great 
 arm-chairs, called poltronas ; (why ? for lazy cowards 
 who shirk sitting up straight, I suppose ;) and a sofa 
 and common chairs innumerable ; and all these are 
 green, and the paper is green, and the carpet is green 
 and red. The mantel is covered with red velvet, with 
 a deep fringe ; on it is a pretty clock under a glass case, 
 and a shepherd and shepherdess, who hold candles. 
 There were two china vases, big as hay-stacks, but we 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. I4 y 
 
 banished them to our art-gallery in the dark room! 
 Our parlor would delight us unqualifiedly, if it were 
 not for the pictures. We have banished so much of 
 the sweet Padrona's china and glass finery, that we 
 have not the heart to ask to have all the pictures car- 
 ried off; I think we shall clo it ultimately, though, and 
 are wasting our strength in this interval of martyr- 
 dom ; — it is incredible till you have seen it, this pro- 
 fusion of awful pictures. Out of the parlor opens a 
 bedroom, Miss C -'s ; high iron bedstead, lace-cur- 
 tained, handsome dressing-table, wardrobe with full- 
 length glass, bureau, etc., all marble-topped; then comes 
 the dark room ; ah, chaos itself! trunks, chairs, — there ! 
 I mean to go this minute and count the chairs in our 
 house. There are thirty -two, in this tiny little house ; 
 it is very droll to see so many ; only four small rooms' 
 and thirty-two chairs. I am not certain that there are 
 not more, for I could not count those very well which 
 were piled up in stacks in the dark room. Everything 
 is of the nicest quality, solid woods, black-walnut or 
 mahogany, with seats of morocco or green or crimson 
 damask. But now I shall tell you no more about fur- 
 niture, excepting of my writing-desk ; this alone proves 
 
 that the house was predestined for us. Miss F 
 
 says she never saw such a thing in a Roman house be- 
 fore ; I never sat to write at anything half so fine ; 
 solid mahogany, quite finely carved, four drawers, then 
 a desk covered with green morocco which lets down, and 
 reveals a shelf with a looking-glass back, and five 
 drawers; (one with a false bottom; how I pine for a 
 secret !) then above this another drawer, and on the 
 top, room for many of my dear books, if they ever, 
 ever get here. This stands across one corner of my 
 sunny little bedroom, and one window on my right 
 hand opens on a little ledge called a balcony, and looks 
 out on the wall of the Quirinal. Ought I not to write 
 to you better than I shall from such a corner as this ? 
 Now I must tell you about our kitchen. This is, after 
 
148 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 all, the crowning glory of this wonderful little " apart- 
 ment," our house. Such sun as lies in our kitchen, two 
 windows full ! and such copper as it shines on ! They 
 must have made ready for a minute prince and princess, 
 who would give dinners to retinues of small people 
 in the little dining-room ; twelve shining copper cas- 
 seroles, all sizes, up to big ones so big an orchard could 
 be made into apple-sauce in them ; copper jars with 
 handles, copper basins, copper kettles, all hanging on 
 the wall in the sun ; all new, shining like mirrors ; 
 white wooden table, solid log, on legs, to pound beef- 
 steak on ; I think the log must have come from Amer- 
 ica; it is huge and looks like hickory. Ah, but the place 
 for the fire ! — I don't believe I can tell you how odd 
 it is. Every time I go into the kitchen, I stand and 
 look and look at it, and Marianina comes in and finds 
 me, and looks so anxious, because she is afraid some- 
 thing is wrong. Imagine the biggest range you ever 
 saw, only not a range at all, just a great stone table 
 with an arch under it and a chimney above it; you 
 can look right up the chimney; all the steam from 
 things you boil goes up this big chimney. You keep the 
 charcoal in this arch under your stone table, and you 
 build a fire on your stone table, anywhere you like, and 
 then there is a little square hole on one side, and you 
 fill that with hot coals from your fire, and set your tea- 
 kettle on them ; and then you put a great gridiron 
 above the whole of your fire, or half of your fire, and 
 set your copper casseroles on the gridiron, and that is 
 the way you cook. People who know say great and 
 delicious dinners can be gotten up by these fires on 
 these tables ; we don't cook our dinners ; they come 
 in a tin box on a man's head, and are smoking-hot 
 when we get them ; so we only try the wonderful 
 table-cooking to make our tea, and boil our rice, and 
 bake our potatoes for breakfast ; but we are going to 
 
 stew pears, and make oatmeal pudding, and L 
 
 and I have our eye on a surprise of a hash some 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. I49 
 
 morning, if we have a chopping-tray, which we have n't 
 yet remembered to find out. I must not forget our 
 well ; that is in the kitchen too, and it has a door to it, 
 a little square door, black like the door to an oven , and 
 it is close to the stone table and chimney, so I said, " Of 
 course this is the oven " ; and I popped my head in, — 
 such a stream of cold air ! and a slender iron chain, and 
 a dark wonderful place, which did n't seem to begin or 
 end. Then I looked up and I saw the sky; and I 
 looked down, and way, way down, near China I should 
 think, — or is it you who are at bottom now ? — there 
 was a gleam of sunshine on water; then I drew my 
 head out, and there stood the Padrona laughing hard. 
 How this water is carried about I do not yet under- 
 stand ; but there it is, ready and flowing, day and night ; 
 sun on it by day, and stars by night, and it comes from 
 the fountain of Trevi. So we, of all people in Rome, 
 are sure to get so spell-bound that we shall return and 
 return, since we not only drink once, but daily, of the 
 charmed water ; and not only drink it daily, but bathe in 
 it daily ! From each story in this house opens a little 
 black door into this secret well-turret. Many times a 
 day I hear the chain clinking up and down, as the peo- 
 ple above draw water. 
 
 Now one thing more is really part of our house. It 
 is on the floor above ; a little open loggia, out-doors 
 room, where, when it is warmer, we shall sit and study 
 and work ; this is over our parlor, so looks down on 
 the palace, and off over the roofs ; to the east and north 
 it has a railing, and rows of geraniums and orange-trees 
 in pots around it, and chairs more than we need. This 
 is the best thing of all, perhaps. 
 
 Upon this upper floor live our sweet Padrona and 
 her husband and little girl. The husband is a master- 
 mason, and his name is Biagio Frontoni ; the Padrona 
 is Vittoria and the little girl who has, like two thirds 
 of the lucky little girls in Rome, the lovely low broad 
 brow and straight nose and curved lips on which 
 
*5° 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 mothers here look all their days, is called Erminia. Er- 
 minia owns four hens and a cock ; and they live very 
 happily on corn up five flights of stairs, and never go 
 out. All the money for the eggs is Erminia' s, and we 
 are so sorry that we don't eat a great many. I take one 
 every noon, beaten up in milk, partly for love of Er- 
 minia. Yesterday Marianina came running at eleven 
 o'clock into the parlor, and, talking very fast, just as if 
 I could understand her, laid one of two snow-white 
 eggs against my cheek so that I might feel how warm 
 it was ! not more than half a minute old I should say ! 
 Then, seeing that I was so pleased with that, she dart- 
 ed off, and in a minute more came back with the very 
 hen cuddled under her arm, as quiet as a kitten ! The 
 hen looked as if she must be purring. I dare say she 
 was — in Italian, which I don't understand. 
 
 Now what remains for the house-warming, except 
 to tell you what we have to eat ? Soup, roast-beef, or 
 lamb, or mutton, with potatoes ; a chicken or a pair of 
 pigeons, with cauliflower, or spinach, or celery; one 
 dish of dolci for dessert ; sometimes boiled rice, with 
 wonderful sauce made of raspberry-jelly ; sometimes 
 puffy pie, which people who eat pie would like ; some- 
 times charlotte-russe ; sometimes stewed pears with 
 raisins, very delicious: always four courses. This all 
 comes in a tin box on a man's head from a restaurant, 
 and we pay for it daily only seven francs ; always there 
 is meat enough left for our breakfast and lunch' the 
 next day. Then when we add Graham bread from the 
 English bakery, almost as good as home-made, and but- 
 ter fresh each day, a bottle of cream each morning, and 
 oranges and apples by dozens, it is plain that we are 
 feasting. 
 
 How much does it cost us ? Ah, we don't yet know ; 
 we are a little afraid that when we add all up at the end 
 of the month, we shall be constrained to decide not to 
 eat two oranges apiece at every meal any longer. But 
 just now we don't count costs. The rent of our house, 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 151 
 
 with the service of the beauty Marianina, who does all 
 we want done in doors and out, is seventy -six scudi a 
 month, about eighty-one dollars and fifty cents. The 
 dinners cost us about forty-five dollars a month, — about 
 forty-three dollars a month each, this makes, all told, — 
 and we hope to get in the wood and the oil and the bread 
 and the butter and the cream and the oranges, etc., with- 
 in twenty dollars a month more (for each). This is 
 not very cheap living, but then it is Rome. If we had 
 come earlier, we could have found cheaper rooms ; and 
 if it had been last winter instead of this, everything 
 would have been cheaper still ; but if gold will only 
 "stay put " or not get above 135, we shall not grumble 
 at paying sixty-five dollars a month for such life as 
 this. JSTow what will there be to tell you next month, 
 since I have told you all this now, and I am under 
 bonds never to write about ruins ? We shall see ; per- 
 haps it will be Ostia, after all ; for if we go down 
 
 into those depths with Signor L , the archaeologist, 
 
 who promises to take us, I think there will be some- 
 thing worth telling, in spite of its being ruins ! If I 
 do not hear regularly each month from you all, I shall 
 write no more. How shall I know you care to hear ? 
 How shall I know you are alive ? Grod bless you alL 
 Q-ood by. 
 
I52 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Rome, Tuesday Eve, January 19, 1869 
 
 DEAR PEOPLE : What do you suppose we do 
 with letters ? I '11 tell you. We read them over 
 and over and over and over, until we know them just 
 as well as we know our alphabets ; and then we put 
 them on our table, where we can see them all the time 
 till we go to bed ; and then, the next day, we read 
 them a great deal more, and carry them in our pockets, 
 and feel every now and then to see if they are there ; 
 and then, the next day — Well, there is no use in 
 going on forever with the story ; but there are Amer- 
 icans who have been seen reading over old letters in 
 the Coliseum ! There now, if you don't all write to 
 me after this, you are the nethermost of millstones ; 
 and, once for all, let me say (because this is my last 
 appeal for letters), do write all the most insignificant 
 details, — what you have for dinner, and the color 
 of your winter bonnet ; what was your last ailment, 
 and whether you took aconite or calomel; if your 
 front gate is off its hinges, or your minister has had a 
 donation-party ; who came in last to see you, and what 
 they had to say. Don't suppose that anything can be 
 too unimportant to tell. You don't know anything 
 about it. Wait till you have been hungry yourself. 
 Here ends the " Complete European Letter- Writer." 
 
 And next ? To-night it shall be about ruins. Don't 
 think I forget your savage injunctions, dear young 
 
 woman of N , who said to me, " Don't write about 
 
 ruins, whatever else you do." For all that, I shall tell 
 you where L and I went this afternoon. At di- 
 vers times, thick envelopes had been left at our door, 
 containing the most learned prospectuses of the Brit' 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. I53 
 
 ish Archaeological Society, and setting forth in terms 
 which sounded fine the rules and the advantages of 
 being members of the same. We thought we did not 
 know enough, and we did not know anybody who be- 
 longed, and so it slipped along and we did n't join, and 
 yet we had all the while a hankering after it. They 
 have a lecture every Friday night in which some es- 
 pecial ruin is described, and then the members of the 
 society take an excursion on the next fine day to see 
 the ruin. It is the fashion to laugh at this, you know ; 
 therefore very few Americans have anything to do 
 with it, for which they are silly ; though I dare say I 
 should have laughed too, if I had got my first impres- 
 sion of it, as one of my friends did, from seeing the 
 whole crowd, one day, rushing pell-mell down a steep 
 place, not into the sea, but nearly into the Tiber, and 
 knocking each other over in their wild eagerness to 
 get down to the lecturer, and hear his explanations; 
 and perhaps I should have found it a bore if I had be- 
 gun with a lecture. But we took the excursion first ; 
 and it is that from which we came home, cold and tired 
 and hungry, three hours ago, but from which I am 
 rested now, and about which I shall tell you, if I can 
 get to it. I shall have all the names wrong, but you 
 won't care. I shall not have the first name wrong, 
 though, for that is Trastevere. I love the very sound 
 of the word ; they never mean to live or die out of it, 
 these proud poor souls, who think themselves more Ro- 
 man than other Romans. I fancy they are all nobler in 
 their looks over there. If I were a man I should 
 certainly go and live in Trastevere and find out some 
 secrets. Painters like to paint the Trastevere women ; 
 but About says people have died who looked too curi- 
 ously at them : I can easily believe this. 
 
 Well, we drove over an old, old bridge (I know the 
 name of that, too, but I won't tell it) into Trastevere, 
 and wormed our way in and round the lanes and un- 
 der all the washerwomen's wet clothes hanging on lines 
 7* 
 
154 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 from window to window, and came to the church of 
 San Crisogono, from whose steps the Archaeological 
 Society were to get out at precisely 2 p. m. (Sounds 
 a little bungling for the name of a pleasure excursion, 
 does n't it ?) There was the church, solemn and still 
 as death. Not a soul to be seen ; we ran round the 
 other side ; worse and worse. There were the empty 
 carriages in which the A. S. had come (lucky there is 
 only one S. ; for I must really abbreviate it) to Traste- 
 vere, but no A. S. ! The coachmen, many of them 
 private, looked at us with the becoming nonchalance of 
 British coachmen who drove the A. S. about, and we 
 thought we would n't ask them any questions ; so we 
 prowled a little, and presently a sunny Italian face 
 said, " Ecco ! Ecco ! " and pointed to a door. He knew 
 what we were after, and so, for that matter, did the 
 British coachmen. 
 
 Into the door we went, and down a winding stair, 
 and plumped right on the A. S. before we knew it. 
 There it was, large as life ; it had about a hundred 
 legs, all pretty badly dressed. I don't know which 
 were ugliest, the trousers or the petticoats. A gray- 
 haired man in the middle of the group was talking 
 earnestly and showing photographs, and everybody 
 was crowding up to see ; the place they were in was 
 like a great open cellar with high walls, and several 
 ether cellars opening out of it. L and I felt a lit- 
 tle dashed at first, but in a moment our friend Signor 
 
 L stepped up, and took us under his wing, and 
 
 there we were launched as archaeologists. 
 
 I must tell you about Signor L . Miss C- 
 
 had a letter to him, and we were told that he had 
 charge of government excavations, and could do more 
 than any one else to show us curious old ruins, was a 
 distinguished archaeologist, etc., etc. So the letter was 
 sent, and we waited patiently for the first visit from 
 the archaeologist. We thought he would be middle- 
 aged, rather stout, wear gold spectacles, and be a little 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 155 
 
 bald. Ha ! the bell rang one night, and in skipped a 
 slender figure in full evening dress, lavender kids, and 
 a violet in his button-hole ; he sank down with a mix- 
 ture of timidity and vivacity perfectly overwhelming, 
 on the tip of a chair, and with a burst of infantile laugh- 
 ter said, " I do not speak any Eengiis but a leettle." 
 
 This was Signor L , and we had hard work that 
 
 first night to keep grave faces. Now we know him 
 very well, and find him entertaining and clever ; but he 
 has still the same infantile way, and I begin to doubt 
 if Italian young men ever grow up. He told us the 
 other day, with perfect gravity and evident sincerity, 
 that his mother " would not permit him to leap in 
 riding ! " 
 
 But I forget that I left you " in a cellar." In this 
 cellar, too, were hidden secrets; it was the old bar- 
 racks of a Eoman cohort in the time of the Emperors. 
 In the court-yard the soldiers had lounged and scrib- 
 bled on the walls. There they were still, the uncouth 
 faces and figures they had drawn ; names and dates ; 
 the name of the consul at that time ; and, best of all, 
 the date of the Emperor's birthday ; and that, Signor 
 L said, was the only record of that Emperor's age. 
 
 In a little niche on one side were figures of Mercury 
 in rough fresco ; this was a little chapel dedicated to 
 his worship. In the middle of the court-yard was a 
 stone rim of a fountain, star-shaped. On this lay 
 bits of all sorts of old marbles which had been dug up 
 in the different rooms ; and the gray-headed man laid 
 his photographs on them : so the years met ! 
 
 I am quite sure that we were the only Americans 
 
 there, except Professor Gr . Everybody else was 
 
 as British as British could be. We did not stay long 
 in the cellar, of which I was glad, for it was colder 
 than any place ought to be into which the sun shone. I 
 felt as if ghostly breaths blew on us from every corner. 
 Then we climbed up the stairs again, and the A. S. 
 which drove got into its coaches, and the A. S. which 
 
156 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 walked took to its very strong legs, and the procession 
 moved off. It was a little like a funeral, but we did 
 not drive far ; the first carriage stopped, and then all 
 the others stopped, and the gray-headed man, who 
 had on a cloak with a pointed hood and kept the hood 
 over his head, led us down on the banks of the Tiber, 
 to what looked to me like the mouth of a drain, if I 
 might be so bold. I gave most irreverent inattention 
 to all he said here ; I gathered only that he believed 
 that the priests used to wash their knives at that par- 
 ticular spot. I did n't believe it for all that, and I 
 looked at the Tiber while he talked. " Yellow Ti- 
 ber " sounds well ; Macaulay never could have got on 
 without that adjective ; but it is such a license, no poet 
 any nearer than England would have ventured on it. 
 The water looks just like the water in the puddles in 
 brickyards, dirty, thick, dead, drab ; as for " shaking 
 its tawny mane," it does not look as if it ever stirred 
 so much as a drop, and all the craft that are on it look 
 as if they had roots like pond-lilies and would n't come 
 up. They are all tipped a little to one side, and seem 
 to lean on the banks, and I don't believe one has been 
 in or out for five thousand years. I have looked and 
 looked in vain to see even a little boat 111 motion there ; 
 and the longer you look, the thicker and the stickier the 
 water seems, and the more lifeless and useless the ships 
 and the two or three hulking steamboats look, and the 
 more real and intent the old bits of stone ruins become, 
 till it would not astonish you to see Julius Caesar him- 
 self step out from under one of the gray lion's heads 
 and knock all the sham of modern shipping into a 
 cocked hat, before you could say Jack Robinson. Sure- 
 ly it takes quite a long time to say Jack Robinson ; so 
 if any of you know how this bit of slang came about, 
 please tell me when you write. But, I forget ! you 
 never write ; so it 's no use asking you questions. 
 
 Presently I found that the A. S. was moving off 
 again ; dear me, they did look as if they knew all 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. It .y 
 
 about that drain (it was n't the Cloaca Maxima though, 
 I took care to find out that much) ; but I made up for 
 not having attended to the drain when we reached the 
 Emporium. This really did thrill my insensible soul ; 
 here were the old wharves, in the old days, and here 
 lay the blocks of marble which were brought and un- 
 loaded and never carried away ; who knows why ? 
 Like pebbles under your feet were strewn bits of old 
 red pottery, where the unlucky or the thriftless broke 
 the jars in which had come oil or dates to be sold. 
 Ah, this was really worth looking at ! 
 
 From a hole in the side of the bank stuck out a huge 
 column of dark marble, only half unburied ; this is the 
 largest column known of its kind, and when the great 
 council meets next year, they are to set it up on some 
 hill in Rome ; then the A. S. said the other end of the 
 column could be seen by going into another hole, far- 
 ther back. Why we all wanted to see the other end of 
 it, Heaven only knows ; but we all ran like sheep ; 
 hopped up and down over the great blocks of marble, 
 and then, when we got to the hole, only one could go 
 in at a time, and nobody could see anything after get- 
 ting in. This seemed to make everybody more anx- 
 ious to go in ; and when you saw that you had to bend 
 yourself nearly double, and poke in head foremost 
 down a slope, with every chance of falling on your 
 nose, it became irresistible. Everybody said breath- 
 lessly to those coming out, " Did you see it ? " and 
 the come-outers said deprecatingly, u Why no, I can't 
 say I did exactly ; it 's pretty dark." And so we all 
 asked, and so we all replied, and that was the end of 
 that. 
 
 Then the Baron V arrived, who was to give 
 
 some explanations of these ruins; he came running, 
 with the light of joy on his old face, and a little bit of 
 stone in a white paper, which he showed to the gray- 
 headed man in the hooded cloak; and they both 
 gloated ; and everybody crowded up and looked over, 
 
i58 
 
 ENCYCLICALS On A TRAVELLER. 
 
 and after all it was rather worth while. A bit of stone 
 they had just found, yellow jasper from Sicily ; very,, 
 very old, and very r very rare. Then the Baron put it 
 into his mouth and wet it, as if it were a small jewel, 
 and held it up again,, rubbing it in the sun to bring out 
 the colors.- And then the British A. S. stretched up 
 its fifty necks to see. Then the Baron began to talk r 
 and dear me, what should it be but French ! So being 
 of an ingenuous and just turn,, I slipped off, and gave 
 up my good place at his elbow to somebody who could 
 understand modern French on the subject of Roman 
 ruins, spoken by an aged Baron without many teeth ; 
 and that was about the last of the archagological ex- 
 cursion. 
 
 Then L and I drove home by way of the Piazza 
 
 ISTavona, where are more oranges and apples to sell 
 than all Rome eould ever eat, one would say. The 
 orange-stalls dazzle you like the setting sun's light on 
 a great front of glass windows, on a hot day. We 
 wanted some sour apples ; Romans don't know what 
 the word means ; there are no sour apples here ; but 
 there are some which are just not sweet, and they are 
 better than nothing. When I begin to stammer out 
 my few substantives at the stalls, the men and women 
 gather round and laugh so good-naturedly, that I 
 don't mind their cheating me, which of course they 
 will do in spite of all I can say. Once, though, I did 
 make a stand with a little black-eyed rascal who sold 
 oranges, and asked me two soldi apiece for them, when 
 I had that very morning been told by Marianina that I 
 should give but one. I shook my head and said " Un 
 soldo, un soldo." How he did asseverate and reiterate, 
 and at last said a soldo and a half; on which I told the 
 driver to " drive on" ; and in two seconds my orange- 
 boy had signalled to the driver to stop, and was pour- 
 ing the oranges into the bottom of the carriage, and 
 laughing just as roguishly at me as if it were the best 
 pke going that I had detected him. " SI, s\ signora; 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER, j-^ 
 
 un soldo ! " Of course strict morality would have re- 
 fused to compound felony (or whatever they may call 
 it, to encourage dishonesty) by buying oranges of such 
 a little liar ; but I only laughed as hard as he did, and 
 bought two dozen. 
 
 Tliursday, p. m. — Now something better than ruins ; 
 we have seen the lambs blessed at the church of St. 
 Agnes. Did n't somebody who did n't know tell us it 
 would be at 9 a.m.? and as the church is outside the 
 walls, did n't we get up at seven, and breakfast shiver- 
 ing at eight, and see icicles in the fountain in the Bar- 
 berini Piazza as we drove out ? However, the sun 
 was clear and bright, and the mountains looked like 
 clouded sapphire against the sky, and it was only an 
 hour too early. 
 
 We had time to see the church thoroughly (it is a 
 cellar, by the way, rather cold on a frosty morning) 
 and get good seats, before the mass began; I have 
 given myself papal absolution from my vow never to 
 sit through another high mass ; because, you see, they 
 are so wily they put the things you do want to see 
 after these tedious masses instead of before them, so 
 you have to sit it out. The crowd grew tremendous, 
 and began to push and scramble long before the lambs 
 came. Luckily a priest had moved a huge Prie-Dieu 
 just in front of us ; so we were sure not only of a barri- 
 cade, but of something to mount upon in crises. 
 
 At last came the servants of the cardinal with their 
 droll long-bodied coats trimmed all over with uphol- 
 stering gimp, elbowing a passage through the crowd ; 
 behind them two men in uniform, each bearing a good- 
 sized lamb on a red damask cushion, its eyes tied, its head 
 half covered with red and white and green flowers, 
 and .bows of red ribbon stuck here and there in the 
 wool. You would n't have thought they would look 
 pretty, but they did ; it is so hard, I suppose, to spoil 
 a lamb ! But what they did to the lambs after they 
 carried them behind the high altar I don't know, we 
 
!6o ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 could not see ; but they were presently brought out 
 again, and laid, cushions and all, under the great mar- 
 ble dome over the altar, and at the feet of the statue 
 of St. Agnes herself. While they lay there the cardi- 
 nal and the priests and the choir, and the sackbuts and 
 the dulcimers and the fiddles, were all chanting and 
 singing and going on, and the lambs once in a while 
 said "Baa, baa," which was the only thing I under- 
 stood of it all, and produced the most marked sensation 
 in the crowd. 
 
 I had a dear little Italian boy to hold up on the top 
 of the desk ; and when the lambs baaed he laughed 
 out, and his nurse from behind, who had consigned him 
 to heretic hands with about equal misgiving and grati- 
 tude, reached over and jerked him and told him to be 
 still. But I encouraged him to laugh. One poor little 
 lamb kept lifting up its head and shaking the flowers, 
 and the man who held it pressed its head down again, 
 till you could hardly see that it had a head at all. 
 Then the men cleared a way again through the crowd, 
 and the poor little creatures were carried off; and good 
 Catholics pressed up to touch them, as they were car- 
 ried by ; and then we came away, only stopping on the 
 staircase to try to read some of the odd inscriptions 
 from the tombs of the early Christians, which are built 
 into the walls, — the inscriptions I mean, not the early 
 Christians. This sentence is about as good as one in 
 Murray where he speaks of this ceremony, and says 
 that the lambs " are afterwards handed over to the 
 nuns of a convent in Rome, by whom they are raised 
 for their wool, which is employed in making the pal- 
 liums distributed by the Pope to great Church digni- 
 taries, and their mutton eaten ! " It is true about the 
 wool, but the lambs are never killed. They are usually 
 given to Roman families, and kept as pets ; an English 
 priest told me so to-day. 
 
 We are luxuriating now in clear cold weather ; at 
 least I am. There are misguided souls (or bodies) that 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER, r 6i 
 
 like the warm days ; but I find them insupportably 
 enervating. As for the sirocco, when that blows all 
 hope forsakes a person of nerves ; you feel as if you 
 were a thousand needles, assorted sizes ! Good by and 
 good by, and G-od bless you all ! 
 
j 6 2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Rome, Monday, February 15, 186S> 
 
 T~>wEAR PEOPLE: Will you be relieved, I wonder, 
 . I J or appalled, when I tell you that I have decided 
 not to try to send you more than seven days in this 
 letter ! Such a seven days as it was, though ; if I 
 could only have photographed the seven sunshines, 
 each bluer and whiter and yellower than the one before 
 it ! Spring is spring nowhere but here, I begin to sus- 
 pect. No matter if a possible fever does lurk in every 
 golden hour, and a certain weariness and lassitude in 
 every whitf of the hot south-wind, you don't care; 
 you glance up and down and run swiftly into the sunny 
 spots with no more care than the lizards, who outstrip 
 you, do your best. 
 
 Well, it is to be a week that you are to spend with 
 me, and you came a week ago last Thursday morning, 
 February 4, and I said, " G-ood, you are just in time 
 for a delightful excursion to the Palace of the Caesars, 
 with the Archaeologicals, this afternoon," — so we set off, 
 
 P and I in a little low carriage, and the rest of 
 
 you on your broomsticks in the air, as you always go 
 nowadays with me everywhere. When we got to the 
 door of the enclosure, there was the Archaeological 
 Society at bay ! door shut ! the old gray hat of John 
 Henry Parker bobbing up and down above its worthy 
 wearer's excitement and indignation, as he was par- 
 leying with the custode, and explaining to the crowd 
 of Britishers that, owing to an unfortunate misunder- 
 standing, we could not go in. There had been some 
 mistake, some informality; of course there had, and 
 Mr. Parker, being by nature a blunderer, had made it. 
 Then danced up the gay Signor L with his violets in 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 163 
 
 his button-hole, and his little cane, — ineffable mixture of 
 infant, archaeologist, and Marble Faun ; and he chuckles 
 in his broken English over Mr. Parker's blunder, and 
 says, " 0, I am so emused to see such many people so 
 deesappointed ! ' " we laugh till we are ashamed, and 
 have to slink behind other people not to be seen. The 
 crowd is quite large, fifty or sixty people ; — some 
 drive off; some follow Mr. Parker, who dashes across 
 the road, past the Basilica of Constantine, with its 
 three grand old arches, and in among the blocks 
 of everybody's house, and everybody's temple, and 
 everybody's road, all lying about in centuries of con- 
 fusion, between the Basilica and the Coliseum. We 
 saunter along after them, but not of them, and finally 
 sit down on what was a doorstep, I dare say, in the 
 days when Romulus went to late suppers ; and there 
 we talk, and knock the sacred bits of marble with our 
 parasols and canes, just as if we had hobnobbed with 
 
 ancients all our lives. At last Signor L says, " This 
 
 is too stoopeed ; we will not do it more ; let us go into 
 the Coliseum." So he shook hands with Mr. John 
 Henry Parker as respectfully as if he believed he had 
 not been in the least to blame for the contretemps, and 
 off we went into the Coliseum, which had all that 
 while seemed to be beckoning us with its gray arms. 
 You all know just how it looks, I knew that before I 
 came ; but how it feels, that is something which don't 
 photograph ! — the unspeakable quiet ; the dance of 
 lights and shade in and out of the arches ; the dis- 
 tance and the nearness of the Gothic spaces of sky, set 
 in settings of stone, and looking like sapphire gates on 
 which, if you had but wings, you might knock and find 
 them opening to you! The noise of the city comes 
 in muffled and dulled, you hardly hear it, and, if you 
 do, you can hardly remember what it means ; you are 
 more tranquil than you supposed this world would ever 
 let you become. I have wondered if one could not 
 even sit still under one of those arches and be happily 
 
j6 4 encyclicals of a traveller. 
 
 and unconsciously changed into wallflower or moss, 
 without a pang of death! The wallflowers look per- 
 verse enough to have been the result of some such 
 uncanny spell cast over human beings; they hang and 
 wave and flaunt everywhere but where you can reach 
 them, — great blazes of yellow darting and swaying like 
 fires on the very tops of the most inaccessible places. 
 By and by there will be more, I see, lower down ; but 
 at first, while they are a marvel, in these early days of 
 February, they are only in spots where no human hand 
 can touch them. We went up to the third tier, and 
 out through one of the openings, and sat down; my 
 feet were in a fragrant bush, looking and smelling like 
 the old-fashioned " southernwood " in country gar- 
 dens. Below us, the mass of mingled earth and ruin 
 was a sharp precipice ; we dared not look over. Just 
 on the edge, a smilax vine tauntingly held up a clus- 
 ter of claret beads, — I thought them seeds ; the Ar- 
 chaeologist said they were buds, and, before I could stop 
 him, had picked them, to prove his theory true. I felt 
 like throwing them on the ground, as King David did 
 the water for which a life had been risked; instead of 
 that, we quarrelled still longer over them, neither of us 
 knowing enough to prove ourself right, and when I 
 got home I found they had fallen out of my bouquet. 
 
 Suddenly we heard a sound of chanting below. 
 There was a procession, going from shrine to shrine, 
 kneeling down before each one, and chanting their 
 prayers ; there were a dozen men shrouded from head 
 to foot in coarse brown cloth, like linen, — only two 
 small holes left for the eyes. " These are they " who 
 beg from door to door, shaking a little tin cup on every 
 threshold, speaking no word, and turning away almost 
 instantly if nothing is given them. I have been told 
 tnat they are many of them noblemen who do this, — 
 some of them as a penance, which is imposed by their 
 confessor, and they have to walk the streets till they 
 have got a certain sum ; some of them belong to a 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. l6 ? 
 
 fraternity" or society, and are pledged to do this so 
 many days in the year. They are uncanny objects to 
 meet in the street. For two days after this scene in the 
 Coliseum I saw them repeatedly, in different parts of 
 the city ; in fact, one of them walked by my side one 
 morning as I was going to my Italian lesson, and I saw 
 that his eyes were black and fiery, and his feet were 
 white and finely veined. (Their feet are bare, with only 
 a leather sandal.) A monk went before them, with a 
 cross, and some twenty or thirty poor people had joined 
 the procession. They all fell on their knees, and crossed 
 themselves, and chanted aloud before each shrine. One 
 poor man, who had a white beard fit for a patriarch, 
 carried a sort of square board, perhaps some relic ; at 
 the end of each prayer, he threw himself forward full 
 length on this board, face down, for a second, and 
 seemed to be kissing the earth. Meekly, at a little 
 distance, followed another smaller procession, all wo- 
 men. A nun carrying a smaller cross, a few sisters 
 walking on each side of her, and a dozen poor women 
 following ; they kept in the rear, and knelt at a re- 
 spectful distance from the monks and the men, but 
 joined in all the prayers. 0, you can have no con- 
 ception of the wild sense of yearning tender pity 
 which sweeps over you sometimes in looking on such 
 a scene. You think you cannot bear it one minute 
 longer ! You must spring down among them and say, 
 "Poor souls, poor souls, this is nothing; do look up, 
 
 and see the sun." I watched Signor L 's face while 
 
 all this was going on, but I could not fathom his ex- 
 pression. I could see nothing beyond a sense of the 
 picturesque additions which the veiled figures and the 
 chanting and the high black crosses made to our view, 
 as we looked down on it all from the upper chambers 
 of the air ; and yet he is a Roman Catholic, — so good a 
 one that he has for five years gone, every spring, into 
 a convent for eight days of entire silence. Think of 
 that ! Not one word to a human being for eight days ! 
 
!66 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 There are some of us who would go mad on the 
 seventh, if not sooner. It seemed malicious in the sun 
 to hurry down on this particular afternoon, as he had 
 not hurried on the day before, but I am sure he set an 
 hour earlier! We were suddenly frightened by seeing 
 that arch after arch began to lie in shadow, and that 
 Mount G-ennaro was turning pink; we almost ran 
 down the stairs, for you must know that nobody may 
 see sunsets from the Coliseum. As for that matter, it 
 is at risk of your life you see them anywhere in this 
 land of malaria, but in the neighborhood of the Coli- 
 seum it is worst of all ; so this was the end of the first 
 of our seven days, dear people. 
 
 Then came the Saturday on which we started out 
 early for the Baths of Oaracalla. You ivould have the 
 G-uide-Book carried along, you remember ? and I called 
 up to you, in the air, as we drove, that you might read 
 it for yourselves ; that I would not be tormented with 
 its husks of information ; that all I cared to know about 
 this most wonderful ruin was that it was begun only 
 two hundred years after Christ, and that emperor after 
 emperor kept adding and improving till it grew to be 
 one hundred and forty thousand square yards big, and 
 sixteen hundred people could bathe there at once. I 
 don't know whether the historians mention about tow- 
 els I perhaps they did n't mind drying off in the £un ! If 
 they had much such sun as this Saturday's, it would 
 have been easy (and perfect bliss besides). There 
 were great halls for exercises ; great round rooms big 
 enouarh for churches, where a thousand or so took a va- 
 por-bath if they liked. Then there were the cold rooms 
 and the hot rooms, and the porticos, and the tribunes and 
 the galleries , and the walls were painted and the floors 
 were mosaic, and everywhere there were grand statues, 
 so that the naked men could never have found them- 
 selves or each other beautiful. And I don't suppose 
 there was a Roman of renown for five centuries who 
 did n't have his turn in the tubs ! That was the way 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. ^7 
 
 it began, but now you see it is quite another sort of 
 affair. You cannot follow out the plan of it, even if you 
 keep Murray's map under your nose every step of the 
 way, and break your shins, in consequence, over the 
 great clutter of old stones lying about you everywhere ; 
 so presently you reflect that it does n't make the least 
 difference to you which room was the " Cella Frigi- 
 daria," and which the " Cella Calidaria "; and as soon as 
 you settle that, you can be happy. Then you can 
 wander through great-walled square after square, and 
 see on which floor there are most daisies ; they are like 
 fields now, — what were the old floors, — thick grass, 
 ivies, vines, thistles. (Ah, the beauty of a Eoman 
 thistle ! Some day I '11 try to tell you just how they 
 look ; they are almost the most beautiful of the road- 
 side things here.) All about you are these jagged bro- 
 ken walls, which look as if they might topple over any 
 minute ; where windows used to be are irregular great 
 gaps, with vines growing in them ; and presently, as you 
 get used to looking up higher and. higher, till you see 
 the tops of the walls, you see what seems to be another 
 earth, midway between you and the sky, and there 
 are small trees growing, and vines and bushes hanging 
 over the edges and reaching down to meet their 
 kindred who are climbing up from below. Then it 
 first dawns upon you what gigantic ruins these are, 
 and by that time the eustode knows you are quite 
 ready to scramble up to the top ; so he comes along 
 with his key and unlocks a door in the wall, and 
 there in the wall is built a narrow ladder of a stair- 
 case, up and up and up which you go, and when you 
 come out at top you find that the " other earth," 
 whose fringes you had seen hanging over, is a 
 magic wild garden, on the tops of the old walls, 
 with here and there a bit of what was roof in 
 Caesar's day, but is now more solid ground than the 
 rest Then you sit down on the safest-looking spot 
 you can find, and lean up against a great stone, and 
 
1 68 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 think you will never go away. You dare not look 
 over ; too dizzy by half. I did wish I knew how high 
 these walls were, but of course that was n't " put down" 
 in Murray. The few rare bits of knowledge that I do 
 hanker after never are in that unpleasant red book. 
 But I can tell you a little by this ; looking over into 
 the great chamber where I had been picking daisies, 
 I could see no daisies, only dark, still, solemn green. In 
 another room men were at work digging down, down, 
 for what they might find ; they had struck the floor, but 
 from our height it looked like a shapeless dark hole, and 
 the men looked like children. 
 
 Here too were the yellow wallflowers, setting their 
 torches where only the wind could reach them. the 
 cruel lure of a flower you cannot possibly touch ! I shall 
 remember some of these wallflowers as long as I live ; 
 and those I pick I shall forget, I suppose, though I 
 nurture them tenderly for many days in my room. 
 
 We were so blessed in the day we took to see these 
 ruins, that we were absolutely alone there : only one 
 stuffy old Englishman came, and he did not stay ; he 
 wheezed up the staircase, and almost as soon as he 
 caught sight of us he went down, looking frightened to 
 death at the thought of two independent American 
 women sitting with no hats on their heads, alone, on 
 the top of the walls of the Baths of Caracalla ! 
 
 But I nearly forgot to say that besides the wonder- 
 fulness of being on the top of these walls, and scram- 
 bling about dizzily on the brink of jagged unroofed 
 chambers, where such thickets of laurestinus and myrtle 
 and all other green-leaved things that grow so hide 
 the real edge that you feel as if the tiny brown path 
 before you might be an illusion and a snare, and the 
 next step would be your last ; besides all this, you look 
 off over all Rome, and all the wonderful hills which 
 encircle the plain, — hills so unlike any others I have 
 ever seen that I do not know how to describe them. 
 It is not their height, — they are not very high ; it is not 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. T Qg 
 
 their shape, — their outlines are not unique ; and per- 
 haps I have seen other hills as pink and purple and gray 
 and blue ; but their beauty is like a subtle beauty in some 
 faces, which cannot vindicate its claim by a feature or 
 a tint, but which ravishes you, and holds you forever ! 
 The artists say it is atmosphere. There is an atmos- 
 phere to faces too ; so I think perhaps there can be no 
 better word for it than that. 
 
 Now have I given you a shadow of an idea of what 
 it is like to roam about for four hours in and on the 
 Baths of Caracalla ? I am afraid I have not ; and what 
 is still more stupid of me, I skipped over from Thurs- 
 day to Saturday, and never let you stir out of the house 
 on Friday, which was the day for the Villa Pamfili 
 Doria ; and there we went and saw the whole of it, 
 and picked anemones, — yes, purple and white anemo- 
 nes and painted crocuses on the 5th of February. 
 
 The word " villa " I have always had an unreasoning 
 dislike ibr, and I went one cold, raw day last month 
 to the Villa Borghese, and increased my dislike. It 
 seemed to me more dismal than a cellar, and more set 
 and lifeless than a checker-board ; and as for the damp 
 chill there was under the trees on that day, I have no 
 words to express it. So even in the sun of this Friday 
 I set out for the Villa Pamfili Doria with no great glow 
 of expectation. Now I must tell you that, by Murray, 
 the grounds are four miles in extent, and that it was 
 given by a pope to his sister-in-law more than two 
 Hundred years ago, so that they have had time as well 
 Eis room to make a comfortable home of it; and having 
 told you this, we will begin at the gate, — a huge and 
 high gate with three entrances, statues on the top and 
 in niches ; then a broad, smooth road, — broad enough 
 for three carriages abreast, and on each side smooth 
 greensward half white with daisies, — you can't think 
 how daisies cuddle in the grass, where they have it all 
 their own way all the year round ; then another gate, 
 less high, with one entrance ; at the side stands a ser- 
 8 
 
170 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 vant of the Pamfili Doria, in a long blue coat, down to 
 his heels, and trimmed with what looks like chintz 
 trimming on the collar and sleeves and pocket-flaps. 
 He takes off his hat to everybody that comes in, and 
 looks as proud as if he represented the hospitality of 
 long lines of Dorias. It is really a princely thing to 
 do, to throw open such a place as this, to the whole 
 swarming public, two days of every week, and let 
 them eat oranges, if they choose, under the trees, and 
 pick all the wild flowers they can. On each side 
 of the road are century-plants, seven and eight feet 
 high, — grandest things for a wall ; behind them 
 great towers of something whose name I don't know, 
 — a sort of tall grass with soft tassels or plumes 
 that stand up eight feet high instead of falling over, 
 but look as light and airy as if they drooped. Presently 
 the house appears on the right, — big, and quite ugly. 
 I think,nobody can look at it much ; yellow and white 
 in panels and patches; statues, in niches, of all the 
 things in the Book of Ezekiel, I think, — but Mur- 
 ray does not mention. Past this, and you are in shade 
 of a great avenue of evergreen oaks. It would be 
 just as easy to believe that Adam set them out as that 
 Innocent X. did, only two hundred years ago. Then 
 the road winds in and out, and up and down ; there 
 are groves, wild tangles of bushes on sides of hills, 
 paths that lead nowhere, ravines, meadows, swamps 
 which have not been touched, and swamps which are 
 made into ponds, and on which swans sail towards 
 the road at sound of wheels. From all the higher 
 parts of the road are exquisite glimpses of Rome, of 
 the Alban Hills, — which are always blue when the sun 
 shines, and which have white villages set like white 
 stones along their sides ; these glimpses are most beau- 
 tiful, when they struggle through among the stone- 
 pines. There are no such stone-pines here as those at 
 this Yilla, and there cannot be anywhere a tree more 
 beautiful than the stone-pine ; no wonder Theodore 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 171 
 
 Parker, when he saw them, said, " Let one be set ovei 
 my grave." A stem straight as a mast, up, up, into 
 the air ; then a sudden outstretching of fairy-like fin- 
 gers and arms which hold up a canopy of the darkest 
 and vividest green ; — a great platform it becomes in 
 some of them, from which another magic company of 
 slender fingers holds up a second and then a third or 
 fourth canopy. So slender are these arms, that from a 
 great distance you do not see them, only the soft, dark, 
 mysterious canopies against the sky, and below, the 
 one shaft which rests in the ground ; that is a stone- 
 pine ! Closer, you see that the needles are set thick 
 and firm on the stems, and point up ; and that they are 
 like our soft-pines at home, only suddenly seized with a 
 heavenward purpose. So, like all other things with 
 heavenward purposes, they make themselves seen 
 everywhere, and everybody soon learns their places. 
 
 There is one stone-pine, all alone, on Mount Mario. 
 Years ago, some Englishman paid a large sum of money 
 to have it left there undisturbed forever. In every 
 view of Rome stands out that one stone-pine. You 
 remember I told you we had one grand one in full 
 sight from our parlor windows ; the Barberini Palace 
 stands in line with it, and seems so much less a thing ! 
 I shall see the pine always, but I can't even remember 
 now exactly how the palace looks. All this in paren- 
 thesis ! Dear me ! shall I ever send you seven days at 
 once ? 
 
 When I first saw the open meadow on the right 
 hand of this broad road, where I left you a page back, 
 it was dotted here and there with bright spots of pur- 
 ple, so bright they looked almost like red. " 0, what are 
 they ? what are they ? " said I. " Only anemones," said 
 
 S , quietly. How soon I knelt at the feet of one ! 
 
 I have it yet, — my first Italian anemone. It was not 
 unlike an ox-eye daisy in shape, but vivid purple, and 
 the petals were larger. Then I found two other kinds, — 
 one white, and one pale yellow, — next, a pair ted crocus, 
 
l7 2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 and then there was no time to look for more, for the 
 sun was on the wrong side of the middle sky, and 
 there were yet more than two miles to go in these won- 
 derful pleasure-grounds. Everybody was there : sev- 
 eral sets of Catholic boys with their priests at their 
 heads; some in long scarlet gowns, some* in black with 
 stove-pipe hats. These last were really running and 
 playing, and it looked about as droll as it would to see 
 the Judges of the Supreme Court kicking up their 
 Jieels ! The red ones wound about among the trees, 
 p,nd shot out their gleams of color at unexpected places, 
 Bo brilliantly that I was very glad they had all joined 
 that particular shade of Catholicism if they could n't 
 be Protestants ! There was a farm-house with a tiled 
 roof, and sheds in a good deal of disorder, and a barn 
 full of hay, all of which we saw, because the barn was 
 only a roof on eight stone pillars, and the hay all bul- 
 ging out for its own wall ! This was so picturesque 
 that you could not help suspecting it of having been 
 done on purpose, instead of because the climate is so 
 mild. Then there was a garden, — a perfect specimen, 
 they say, of the ideal Italian garden, — a flat square, laid 
 out in the most absurd little shapes and strips, edged 
 with green. They looked like the first pages in Euclid, 
 or still more like a cook's table after the doughnuts 
 have been all cut out, and the corners and bits of the 
 dough left. How I laughed ! It was the most ridicu- 
 lous thing for a thing that meant to be fine ! I can't 
 imagine anything but small caricature puppets of 
 flowers growing in it. This is the only thing in the 
 grounds of the Pamfili Doria Villa which is not en- 
 chantingly beautiful ! But I must not say another word 
 about this Villa, except that, besides all I have told 
 you, it has old tombs and columbaria, and fountains 
 and greenhouses, and a little church, and a little monu- 
 mental temple to the French soldiers killed in 1849, 
 and a casino, and more violets than there are in all the 
 rest of Rome put together ! And here endeth Friday. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. l73 
 
 On Sunday we went to church at San Pietro in 
 Montorio. We did n't hear much of a sermon, to be 
 sure, nor stay through the services, because the church 
 was very cold. But we made up for it by going into 
 the cloister of the convent adjoining, and going into 
 the little temple which somebody built over the very 
 spot on which Peter was crucified. You don't doubt 
 about that spot, do you ? What is the use ? and then 
 wait till you hear the circumstantial evidence, i. e., we 
 saw the very hole in which the cross rested ! What 
 more could one have ! It is in a crypt (that is Roman 
 Catholic short for a dark, damp cellar) under the tem- 
 ple, and there is an iron grating over the hole, and a 
 sacred lamp perpetually burning in it. The old monk 
 who showed us in had a long stick, hollow at one end, 
 which he poked down and twisted round and round a 
 few times at the bottom of the hole, and brought it up 
 full of sacred earth, and then held it out to me, just as 
 butter-men hold out to you the samples of their butter 
 from the bottom of the tub. I realized afterwards 
 that I ought to have taken the earth and carried it 
 away as a relic ; but I only stared at it and him and 
 said nothing, and he put it back again with a sigh. 
 However, he liked our franc just as well as if we had 
 been Christians. 
 
 The cloister was the most shut-up spot I ever saw : 
 high walls, brick and stone pavement ; only the sky for 
 relief, and that looked so far off it would very soon 
 have discouraged you more than it would have com- 
 forted you, if you had been shut up there ; in the mid- 
 dle, the cold, white, still, round temple with a dome, 
 and a row of gray pillars around it. I thought it very 
 beautiful, and was quite surprised to find it one of the 
 things set down in Murray as proper to be admired. 
 A few little weeds were struggling up between the 
 stones in this cloister, and I thought if we did not 
 escape pretty soon I should find my Picciola. The 
 poor monk looked wistfully after us as he let us out 
 
l 74 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 I suppose he goes out too when he likes, but that can't 
 make much difference if you know you must go back 
 at night. O, I long to get out of hearing of the clank 
 of these chains ! 
 
 This church and convent stand on the top of one of 
 the highest hills ; behind the church, a few rods farther on 
 the road, is the fountain Paolina, — such an ugly thing ; 
 all but the water, which is beautiful and makes you 
 leap about to look at it, — three great streams rushing 
 out of a wall into a semicircular basin ; while the wall 
 and the basin and every head and corner and post are 
 so ugly, it only shows what water is, that it can be 
 so beautiful in spite of them. Some pope — a Paul, I 
 suppose — made the fountain more than two hundred 
 years ago ; that is quite modern here, in fact, a mere 
 thing of yesterday. The water comes all the way from 
 the lake of Bracciano, and after this one brief minute 
 of jollity and beauty plunges down into the city, and 
 does — what do you think ? — turns all the flour-mills ! 
 How it must chafe when it remembers its frolic in 
 the pope's fountain, to which it can never, never get 
 back! 
 
 From the plateau in front of this fountain, and in 
 front of the church, is a grand view of Eome, — the en- 
 tire campagua and the mountains. It was so warn 
 that we sat down on the grass and looked and looked. 
 The gay Roman people were flocking up and down, 
 keeping their out-of-doors Sunday. Poor souls, it is 
 no wonder this becomes part of their religion ! Three 
 women sat in a group by the roadside, with huge piles 
 of some sort of salad, which they were getting ready 
 for market. They ate almost more than they put into 
 the basket; munch, munch, munch, — away they ate 
 and talked, and talked and ate, and laughed, as if clear, 
 cold, raw spinach were the most delicious thing in the 
 world. Before we went home, we took a turn in the 
 Coliseum, which was sunny, and had more flowers in it 
 than on Friday ; from the topmost pinnacle they brought 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 J75 
 
 down asphodel to me, and when I saw that, I was sorry 
 I had been so unsocial as to choose sitting alone in my 
 old arch, with my feet in the southernwood bush, rather 
 than climbing up with them. And here is the end of 
 the fourth lesson. 
 
 Now Monday can be told in few words, because it 
 is only the Villa Pamfili Doria over again. We went 
 early and we stayed so late that we were half sure we 
 should wake up with fever the next morning ; and all 
 that time we were picking anemones and lovely green 
 things to make into bouquets to throw at the Carnival 
 on Tuesday. Yes, absolutely to throw anemones at 
 the Carnival ! Now that it is over, I see that it par- 
 took of the nature of sacrilege, but at the time it 
 seemed to me wise and good. 0, such a basketful as 
 I brought home ! and the next morning I spent two 
 hours and a half tying them up into lovely wild-looking 
 bunches ; snowdrops mixed with them, and great ivy- 
 leaves set round like a bouquet-holder. I felt afraid I 
 had left no anemones for anybody else, and thought I 
 had enough to make at least a dozen bouquets, and, 
 after all, I had only seven ! Then I had a basket full 
 of other flowers, and I had a white cape trimmed with 
 
 purple, and a fine wire mask, — and L had a white 
 
 cape trimmed with blue, and a wire mask, and a big 
 basket of flowers ; and Tuesday afternoon we set out 
 with Marianina, our beautiful little serving-maid, bright 
 and early, after lunch, for the Carnival. You must 
 
 know that all this week Miss S and I had been the 
 
 owners of half a balcony on the Corso, and L had 
 
 been the owner of a seat in a fine balcony with other 
 friends, and yet we had been only twice to look on, 
 and found the whole thing so stupid, and the horse-race 
 so cruel, that we did not care to go again. But at the 
 last minute I was seized with a sudden desire to enter 
 into it wildly for an hour or two on the last day, and 
 see if I could by clear, sheer force of will compel my- 
 self to be amused ! Would you believe it ? in less 
 
176 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 than ten minutes after I took my stand on that balcony, 
 and spread my flowers out before me, and began to 
 pelt people, I was just as excited as if I had been the 
 granddaughter of Julius Cassar himself! I hit every- 
 body I aimed at, and I caught every bouquet that was 
 thrown at me, and I worked for three hours harder 
 than I ever worked anywhere except in Dio Lewis's 
 gymnasium ! It sounds silly. I am half ashamed to tell 
 of it, except that it would be a pity not to let you have 
 the laugh at me, and you can't laugh harder than I 
 do to think of it ; for a woman of — well, of my age ! 
 to be heartily amused for two solid hours throwing 
 bouquets to a crowd, and being pelted back by bou- 
 quets and sugar-plums ! it sounds like a sharp, short 
 attack of being crazy. But I did it. Some of the 
 bonbons were very pretty, but I threw them all down 
 again to other people. My anemones, though, I did not 
 shower down promiscuously, you may be very sure; 
 our balcony was low enough for us to see the faces of 
 the people perfectly, and I threw anemones to none 
 excepting those who looked as if they knew the differ- 
 ence between anemones and miserable bought flowers 
 on wireSo Then, when it grew dark, everybody lit 
 candles, and we had a few minutes' fun with those. 
 The people from below threw bouquets and hit them 
 and put them out, and the people from above knocked 
 them out of your hands, and the people from the next 
 balcony switched them out with their handkerchiefs ; 
 and everybody screamed out, " Senza moceoli, senza 
 moccoli," and as you looked up and down the Corso, 
 the dancing lights were like a shower of stars blown 
 about in the wind. But this lasted only a little while, 
 and few people in the street had candles ; so that it 
 was quite unlike what it used to be in old times. In 
 fact, the whole thing from beginning to end has been 
 no carnival at all, they say. The Romans do not 
 choose to be amused any longer. There are too many 
 sons in prison, too many waiting for one more chance 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 177 
 
 to fight; a hairdresser said to L one night in a 
 
 half-frightened whisper, when she asked him why the 
 Komans did not give themselves up to the Carnival as 
 they used, " The whole city is in anger, miss ! " Even 
 in the little contact which we have with the Romans 
 we see smoulderings of the fire. I can't help wish- 
 ing they would wait till this mild, gentle, good old 
 Pius is peacefully put away under (or in) his sarcopha- 
 gus. He cannot live long ; I do not want him to be 
 disturbed. After that, I could stay and fight myself to 
 set this poor people free. 
 
 Well, that was the end of the Carnival ; we left a 
 dozen great bouquets in our balcony, and Marianina 
 lugged home a few of the best ones which I thought 
 might possibly do to take to pieces in the morning, 
 and rearrange. Alas ! in the morning the poor things 
 showed what they had been through. The history of 
 one bouquet through an afternoon of the Carnival 
 would be a strange record. I do not doubt that some- 
 times the same bouquet goes through thousands of 
 hands. Some of them had live canaries tied on them. 
 That seemed to me even more cruel than the goading 
 the poor horses for the race, which is a bit of cruelty 
 of lineal descent from the days of the Gladiators. 
 
 Now I have made these days so long, that of the 
 next one I can tell you nothing, except that it was 
 just as sunshiny and warm as the rest, and we went 
 to another villa, — the Villa Wolkonsky. Here are old 
 Roman aqueducts, covered with ivies whose stems are 
 larger than my wrist, and which branch and spread 
 like trees ! And here is an old tomb, which in the 
 time of Nero one Mr. Cladius built for himself in a 
 fine, conspicuous situation, as he supposed, and put his 
 family names on the front; but now his tomb door is 
 many feet underground, and the curious few go down 
 into his tomb, and tumble about the bones of his kin- 
 dred as much as they like. A Russian princess owns 
 this villa, but has not lived in it for five years ; so in 
 8* L 
 
178 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 what is she better, said we, than American princesses 
 who own no villa? 
 
 What do you think of this for a week ? We don't 
 live quite so fast every week, but then we might, if 
 it never rained., and if we were never tired ; so the 
 Roman calendai becomes, you see, quite another thing 
 when you count, the days in Rome. In spite of it all, 
 however, I am hankering after a hill country with only 
 its own legitimate dead about ! Not that I mean to re- 
 flect on the fami ly records of the Caesars and Antonines ; 
 but I think it chokes the air a little too much to dig 
 down into so many layers of sepulchre. Sufficient 
 unto a century is the dead thereof. I shall like Switzer- 
 land better than Rome, and I shall say a new kind of 
 prayer at night when I get into a country where I can 
 go to bed once more with my window wide open. 
 
 G-ood by now, dear souls, one and all. Tell me all 
 the smallest things you do, and keep a little green spot 
 in your every-day hearts for me. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. jy 9 
 
 Rome, March 15, 1869. 
 
 DEAR PEOPLE: I have been to an exhibition 
 of delegates from Babel. Don't think this is a 
 figure of speech, it is naked truth ; the other name for 
 it, though, is the ExhibitioD of the College of the Pro- 
 paganda. 
 
 the wily wisdom of this Romish Church ! the fine- 
 ness of the web they spin I Nothing ever showed it to 
 me like these thirty tongues, — Hinclostanee and several 
 other dialects of India, Arabic, Greek, Persian, He- 
 brew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Armenian, Curdo, Telegunese. 
 Canarese, Coptic, Latin, French, Celtic, Danish, Illyri- 
 an, Bulgarian, Albanian, and I don't know how many 
 more. But first I will tell you how we got there, and 
 I might as well say here, that about this price has 
 to be paid for everything you see and hear in this city. 
 The exercises were to begin at half past two , we ar- 
 rived at the door at quarter past one. Already a few 
 determined spirits had taken their stand close to the 
 great padded curtain to make sure of being first in. 
 Soon there was a solid phalanx that could have bat- 
 tered the door down if they had gone at it head fore- 
 most. I never saw the water let on at a dam ; but I 
 have seen women let in at these Romish doors, and it 
 must be pretty much the same thing. Perhaps you 
 think you are a free agent in such a crowd ; anything 
 but that; you feel as if you were nothing but one 
 great elbow that somebody else shoved with! Each 
 time I think I will never go again, but you can't stay 
 away. 
 
 It was a very narrow passage-way into which we 
 were let by the opening of the first door this day. 
 
i8o 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Were we free now ? no, by no means ; at the 
 other end of this passage another door. In it one of 
 the Swiss G-uards, red and yellow and big with his 
 towering plume past him but two could go at once ; 
 first come, first served. Then such pushing! such 
 elbowing ! disagreeable, insufferable, only that you 
 have to suffer it ; and as if this were not enough, up 
 comes one of the authorities, and drags through, by 
 main force, two women who were at the rear end of 
 the crowd, came late, and had no sort of right to a seat 
 at all: women at the front remonstrate; man coolly 
 says, "If you don't let these ladies pass, you sha'n't 
 come in yourselves, that 's all," and jerks them along. 
 
 A V and L C get in several shots 
 
 before Miss H and I. When we are handed into 
 
 the small gallery, there they sit, stowed each in her ap- 
 pointed chair, A in the first row, L on the 
 
 third, and I am mounted to the fourth. This gallery 
 is like a little section of the family circle in our thea- 
 tres ; it will hold perhaps forty, — that is all, and 
 there is no other place ; so, instead of grumbling, 
 you begin to thank your stars you got in at all. 
 Still the men pass the women along twos by twos, 
 and don't the last couples look black who have to 
 climb up to the top seats ? They might as well be in 
 St. Peter's for all they can see or hear of what is go- 
 ing on in the hall below, down into which we look. 
 It is half filled with the Propaganda boys facing the 
 gallery ; a great sea of black cloth with gleams of red 
 lining, and a featureless white face once in so often, — 
 that is how they looked. 
 
 Then there were three fiery blotches on the front 
 seat, cardinals' caps and cloaks of hottest red ; behind 
 them, the next shade of dignity and righteousness, the 
 monsignori, all purple (half mourning, I suppose, be- 
 cause they are not cardinals) ; then came spectators, 
 chiefly priests and monks ; in two balconies, opposite 
 each other, the music, — the leader had gray hair, and 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER, jgj 
 
 held a violin under one arm all the while he beat time 
 with his baton ; it was droll to see him leaning out of 
 his balcony, and gesticulating with both arms to the 
 other half of his orchestra way off on the other side of 
 the hall. I forgot to listen to what they played, but 
 it was very fine. Then there were windows opening 
 from an outside gallery into the hall, and at all these 
 windows stood the women who could n't get seats. 
 Every year there are fights at these windows ; no- 
 where, they say, are there such fights seen as at these 
 ceremonies at the Propaganda, — there is so little room 
 and so much interest. 
 
 P and N saw a shocking scrimmage there 
 
 to-day ; in fact, that was one reason they came away, 
 
 1ST remarking in an audible tone that she came to 
 
 hear the young men speak, but she had heard nothing 
 but quarrelling and fighting, and she should not stay to 
 hear any more. Fancy hearing well-dressed women, 
 who can speak French and Italian and English, and 
 perhaps G-erman, abusing each other face to face in a 
 public crowd. 
 
 " Madam, it is evident you are no lady." 
 J' Madam, I will call the police and have you taken 
 out." 
 
 Well, we all got our breaths, and the boys had theirs 
 beforehand, and it began. Nobody spoke more than 
 five minutes; those who could, sang at the end of 
 their little " piece " a few lines of what I presumed to 
 be a national air. Some of them were very wild and 
 pathetic ; most of the Asiatic ones reminded me of the 
 songs of the sailors at sea. It was a great joke that 
 when the " Inglese " came we could not understand it 
 much more than we had the Persian. It was spoken 
 by " Signor Griacomo Burns," of Glasgow, and, so far as 
 I did comprehend it, I must say it was anything but 
 shrewd or Scotch-like in its ideas. I forgot to tell you 
 that we all had had given to us p pamphlet programme 
 of the exercises, in which was printed each speech, in 
 
1 82 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Italian, with the man's name and country below it. 
 Some of these brought up strange pictures just by their 
 very look. " Signor Michell Chenaja di Yelchife JSTella 
 Mesopotamia," " Signor Grulielmo Samba dell Isola di 
 S. Maria Nella Senegambia." Ah, he was the man 
 that it would have warmed your heart to hear ! Black 
 as the ace of spades, a great, full voice like a river, and 
 the presence and the motion of an orator; how they 
 clapped and clapped and clapped him ! He wore gold 
 glasses, and a side light kept flashing on them, making 
 his eyes look like yellow topazes at the distance from 
 which I looked at him. He sang an African song 
 which was so exactly like a plantation " break-down," 
 that I began to think the whole scene was a weird, 
 dream ; the candles, the scarlet, the fresco, the Swiss 
 Guards, the erect black man in his solemn black gown, 
 and out of his mouth coming these ludicrous " Hi-yi's." 
 But I think he was the strongest man intellectually of 
 all who spoke. I have observed him many times 
 before, walking arm in arm with the white students. 
 You hardly ever go out without meeting a procession 
 of them taking their walk, and I have always been 
 impressed by this man's face. How long before we 
 shall be great enough in America to see such a thing 
 in Yale or Harvard ? 
 
 Everybody grew tired, but I did n't. Many went out, 
 so that I finally clambered over and down till I was 
 in the front seat. After the exercises were done we 
 leaned over the railing and looked down. Up steps 
 the guard, and says, " It is against orders for women to 
 look over ! " I could n't see what more harm we could 
 do to the poor men by looking over. We had been 
 set up there in full sight for three hours, for them to 
 look at and find out how nice we were ! But we turned 
 
 meekly away, and A and I ran home alone 
 
 through the Due Macelli and past the Capo la Casa, 
 through the Via Felice ; then she to the Via Sistina 
 and I to the Via Quattro Fontane, and it was quite too 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. ^3 
 
 dark, but nobody troubled us. Do you like the sound 
 of the names of the places where we walk ? I do. If 
 one could only walk more ! But these torturing pave- 
 ments ! Somebody said in the " Pall Mall,'' the other 
 day, that a pilgrimage over the pavements of Rome 
 without peas in your shoes was quite enough to atone 
 for most sins. Sometimes I think one hour of it has 
 cleared my scot ! 0, how they twist you and turn 
 you I Everybody hobbles, nobody walks. 
 
 The next day we drove out to Santa Maria Navicella, 
 one of the oldest churches in Rome, way out and up 
 on the Cselian Hill. We went through lovely old lanes, 
 walled up high on each side, with ivies and vines of all 
 sorts; then under the arch of Dolabella — did you 
 know him ? — and then we came to the church. We 
 knew it by the great marble boat in front of it, — solid 
 marble, gray and black, and split in the middle ; a 
 boar's head on the prow, much chipped on the edges, 
 and with fools' names scribbled over it, — chiefly in 
 English, I am sorry to say. Leo X. made this one; 
 there used to be a much older one, which came to grief, 
 and this is the model of it. I am sure all the little 
 boys on the Ceelian Hill for centuries have wished they 
 had it. 
 
 In the church were thirty men mumbling off a sort 
 of lay service, and a slipshod monk at the altar, and the 
 
 two Misses , nice old maids from Massachusetts, 
 
 patting about among the pillars. Over the tribune — 
 that means the round place at the end, on which the 
 altar stands — were such odd mosaics, you laughed 
 before you knew it ; Christ and the Apostles and the 
 Angels all put in little bits of marble, and looking much 
 more as if they came from the court of Japan than the 
 kingdom of heaven ; in the ninth century they were 
 stuck up there, and I suppose they will stay forever. 
 Next we went to San Stefano Rotondo. This is still 
 queerer and older ; used to be part of a meat-market 
 in Nero's time. In the court-yard we saw an old well, 
 
3 84 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER 
 
 which somehow reminded me of getting ice from the 
 butcher's shop next door, at home. 
 
 The church is just one huge round room, high and 
 gloomy and bare, with a row of columns, and what 
 do you think for frescoes ? — all the possible and impos- 
 sible martyrdoms ! panel after panel, the whole dreary 
 circuit ; and you get into such a horrible sort of spell 
 that you can't help going on from one to another, -till 
 at last you feel as if you had been head-executioner to 
 the Inquisition for a hundred years, and would have 
 to chop off heads, and broil people on gridirons, like a 
 kind of Wandering Jew, till the end of time ! 
 
 Under each picture is a slab with a Latin inscription 
 telling you who did it, to whom, where and when, 
 and all about it, and you spell these out with a dim 
 sense of finding out that it is all a fancy sketch. This is 
 all there is to this church, except some grotesque mo- 
 saics in the tribune done in the seventh century, two big 
 saints and a little Saviour, and in the vestibule a great 
 marble chair in which St. Gregory sat and read his 
 " Fourth Homily." I hope you don't think I know who 
 he was, or what his Fourth Homily was about. All I 
 know is, that, if the Homily were long, the Saint must 
 have grown uncommon stiff and cold. 
 
 Monday we went all over the Quirinal Palace, — 
 twenty-six rooms of it at least, all they show ; I dare say 
 they keep twenty-six more locked up. Such a dreary 
 place as it is! the poor lonely Pope ! I hope the 
 Vatican is better. Marble floors, or else inlaid wood ; 
 walls marble half-way up, and never stopping; such 
 distant ceilings '; many of the walls hung with crimson 
 damask, which looked as if it had been frozen, spite of 
 its red ; chairs in nearly all the rooms of solid wood, 
 some of them black walnut, but some painted in imi- 
 tations of marble and malachite, all with Pius IX. 
 on the front, the poor garde nobile, and anybody else 
 who lives there, must have a hard time sitting on them ; 
 crucifixes in every room, and in several of the state 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 185 
 
 rooms a throne with a canopy over it. I kept thinking 
 the Pope had run off with my beggar, and lucky enough 
 he would be if he had ! 
 
 We saw his bedroom, all crimson and gilt, but quite 
 plain ; that and the study were the only rooms which 
 looked small enough to live in ; he has a study table, 
 like any other man, with a place in the middle to put 
 his legs under. I sat down in the chair, and put my 
 heretic feet on his damask footstool, where nobody 
 saw me. I should like to write one of my encyclicals 
 there. 
 
 But the spittoons ! Ha ! that pleased me ! I hope 
 somebody will tell Mr. Dickens ; I never saw so many in 
 a hotel in America. They are in almost every room, but 
 their purpose is cunningly hid in this fashion : the box 
 has a lid, — it is all of wood, — and a broad band like a 
 bell-pull fastened to this lid, and then going up to a 
 sort of high post, which is attached to the box, and the 
 whole thing looks rather ornamental, and it was n't till 
 after some time I smelt out the trick; then I slipped 
 back into the Pope's study, and I lifted up the very one 
 by his sacred chair, and sure enough there it was, sand 
 and all, a spittoon ! The custode never missed me, but I 
 wonder what he would have said if he had caught me 
 at it. 
 
 A dear honest old priest from the country was taken 
 round at the same time with us, and his tender ado- 
 ration of everything was pathetic to see ; he went on 
 tiptoe round the most sacred spots, and talked under 
 his breath. The custode would speak English with 
 us, and we could hardly understand a word he said ; 
 but we were ashamed to ask him to speak in Italian, 
 for fear we should understand still less. 
 
 The Pope's private chapel was the only homelike- 
 looking place there ; that was really cosey, if it is proper 
 to say such a thing of a room with arches on each side 
 and a high dome, all one mass of gilt and carving 
 and fresco ; but it really did look comfortable, it was 
 
^5 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 so small in comparison with the great giant caverns 
 we had been through. In this chapel is a G-uido, — 
 The Annunciation. The Virgin is a good-looking wo- 
 man in a great blue gown, and the Angel is another 
 good-looking woman in as much more yellow gown, 
 and with the things which artists have agreed among 
 themselves to call wings growing out of her shoulders. 
 
 Tuesday was the day for the Villa Albani. I have 
 told you about the Villa Pamfili Doria. That is my love, 
 no other villa will wean me ; but the Villa Albani has 
 a great collection of statues and pictures. I sat on the 
 balcony all the afternoon, and looked at the view : Al- 
 ban hills all in shadow, deep blue ; Monte Gennaro also 
 in deep shadow, but the whole long range of the Sa- 
 bine Hills between, one kaleidoscope of light and shade ; 
 the clouds lay low and the sun was bright, — cloud 
 effects here are rare, for the sky is usually clear, too 
 clear for the beauty of the landscape. I shall never 
 forget the Sabine Hills that afternoon. Among the 
 statues was one old Bacchus that I think I should like 
 to have come to supper. 
 
 Wednesday I drove about all day with P , who 
 
 was doing last errands before starting for Sicily. It 
 always seems more unreal to do shopping in Rome than 
 anything else; to stop in one of these old streets at a 
 glove-cleaning place seems such a flagrant violation of 
 unities ; after the errands were done, we went to the 
 Coliseum for our good-by, and sat there till the sun 
 looked in in level beams, it was so low. The wallflower 
 is blazing out now from all the high places which you can- 
 not reach, — such great swinging masses of vivid yellow, 
 it is more than human nature can bear to see it, and 
 the larks sing among it like divine flutes. While we 
 sat there, some poor working women walked through, 
 and all knelt and kissed the great cross in the centre, — 
 to kiss that cross makes you free for a certain number of 
 years from Purgatory, — after them came two priests, 
 and took off their great flapping hats and kissed it too. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. ^7 
 
 Thursday we went to the Ludovisi Yilla ; that is 
 really a villa which one could go into a rhapsody over 
 if one had not sworn allegiance to the Pamfili Doria. 
 0, that reminds me I have not told you that in the 
 Pamfili Doria the real anemones are out now, and on 
 Friday, the 19th, we went there, and I picked a great 
 basket full. The meadows were literally covered; we 
 trod them down, we could not help it ; I could have 
 cried ; I did not dare to look where I had walked ; 
 they are white, they are buff, they are scarlet, they are 
 crimson, they are lavender, they are pink, they are 
 purple, they are white with purple veins, white with 
 pink tips, buff with dark crimson base, buff with pur- 
 ple, and besides all these many more ! Of course you 
 don't believe me ; I should n't if anybody told me. 
 They are like a small single poppy, made a little more 
 neatly, and the leaves pointed a little and setting up in 
 a cup shape ; they are all sizes, from a tiny buttercup 
 to a good genuine poppy size ; they are close to the 
 ground, or they get up as high as six or eight inches on 
 their stalks ; and all the world can go two days a week 
 to this villa and pick all they want, and, whatever else 
 the house of Doria does or does not, that is a princely 
 bit of good-fellowship with the world, is n't it ? Now 
 to go back to Ludovisi, it was there that I had your 
 last letter. We had found it at the bankers on our way, 
 and I carried it in my pocket through great avenues of 
 ilexes, walks with hedges of box and laurel twenty feet 
 high, past a bird-cage as big as a small house, with a 
 wire dome, and a big tree growing under it, and a foun- 
 tain at the foot of the tree, and a hundred canaries 
 doing as they liked there, which was chiefly to sing 
 and to spatter ; past statues of Hercules and all the 
 other old heroes, and a grand head of Juno ; past great 
 frescoed rooms where are an Aurora by G-uercino and 
 a Night by somebody else, both of which are lovely 
 in photograph, and not a bit lovely in plaster, — way 
 up and up to the third floor of the casino and out on 
 
188 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 the terrace, where we sat down with our backs to the 
 sun and our faces to Soracte, and I read your letter. 
 
 L read one from her brother, and we said no word 
 
 to each other for an hour. Then we walked about and 
 picked violets which should be called Tyrian, they are 
 so purple. All of a sudden there came a dark cloud 
 in the midst of the blue of the sunshine, and without 
 one second's warning a sharp shower. It really seemed 
 as though some mischievous little heavenly boy must 
 be doing it with squirt-guns, for the sun shone as bright- 
 ly as ever, and at first we could not even see the cloud, 
 it was so little a tree hid it ; but we had to run all the 
 same as if it had been big, and we got wet, too, before 
 we could reach our carriage, and that was the end of 
 that day's sight-seeing. And that must be the end of 
 this letter. 
 
 We long for the country. Albano gleams out cool 
 and white high on the hillside only twelve miles 
 away, and beckons and lures like a magic strain of 
 music in the distance. Perhaps my next letter will be 
 from that fairy spotc Farewell. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER, ^9 
 
 Venice, Sunday p. M., May 16, 1869. 
 
 DEAR PEOPLE : We came away. It was harder 
 than you could imagine. Rome is a siren of sirens. 
 It was so hot that we could scarcely breathe from 
 ten o'clock till four, and there was nothing to eat ex- 
 cept ices and strawberries with no flavor to them, but 
 we clung to the very stones of that city. I went in 
 from the beloved Albano on Friday, the 7th, supposing 
 that we should set out for Yenice on the following 
 
 Tuesday ; but P and N were not ready, and 
 
 we did not get off until Thursday. At first when they 
 told me this I said, " I will go directly back to Albano. 
 I will never stay in this ill-odored oven five days ! " 
 But I stayed, and when Wednesday came I privately 
 hoped that some dresses, or marbles, or pictures would 
 not come home at the last minute, so that we should 
 be kept a day or two longer. There are still so many 
 things in Rome that I have not seen. I feel as if I had 
 made only a beginning, though I have been there more 
 than four months ; in those five last days, however, I 
 made good use of the time ; if I had been as indus- 
 trious all winter, I should have accomplished more. 
 Among other things I did, which had been inexplicably 
 postponed in the winter, was the " Palace of the Caesars." 
 I could not tell how many times the day had been set 
 to go there. Once, as I wrote you, I stood at the gate, 
 with the whole Archaeological Society at my back, and 
 could not get in. I had grown superstitious about it ; 
 but at last I really did get in, and then, my country- 
 men and women, what a fall was there! I had all 
 along anticipated seeing ruins grander than any other 
 except the Coliseum. As I saw them from the distance 
 
190 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 they looked imposing, and looked wild and overgrown, 
 like trie Baths of Caracalla, and as all ruins ought to look. 
 But what do you think you see when the gate is first 
 opened? (It is owned, you must know, by Napoleon, 
 sold to him for $ 40,000 by the King of Naples, " that 
 very stoopid young man," as Signor L said, in tell- 
 ing me about it, " for $40,000 this whole grand ruin; 
 and the water privilege alone is worth more than that." 
 So the Emperor has walled it in, and is carrying on 
 excavations in a masterly manner, and the public only 
 
 go in on Thursdays ; but I went in with Signor L , 
 
 who has always the right to go anywhere on any day, 
 so far as we can discover ; and we went on a Satur- 
 day.) When the gate is opened, you see a broad walk 
 and a sort of cafe-like building, and very much land- 
 scape garden, nice little beds, such as you might see in 
 Brooklyn or Springfield, bushels of roses, and white 
 thorn and box borders ; if you are like me, you stand 
 stock-still and burst out laughing, and say, " Where is 
 the Palace of the Caesars ? " and then your archaeolo- 
 gist leads you along, up and up, into great spaces, 
 some of them floored with mosaic, some of them bare 
 earth, but all cleaner and more swept and garnished 
 and scrubbed than any old maid's parlor you ever saw ; 
 great columns set here and there, and grand bits of 
 marble, fragments of acanthus, and legs and arms, etc., 
 such as you see always in the ruins of Eome ; but here 
 they are all set by so neatly that, upon my word, you 
 don't feel as if they were ever in any other place in 
 their lives. Then, as I say (if you are like me), you 
 laugh still more, in fact, you get positively irreverent ; 
 and you look round, expecting to see old women with 
 pails and mops in every corner, and there is nobody in 
 sight, except workmen wheeling away things in wheel- 
 barrows, and you think they must be carrying off the 
 old women with pails and mops, for there does not 
 seem to be anything else to carry off! All this time the 
 archaeologist is delivering a little lecture by your side; 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER, j^i 
 
 how this is the old audience chamber, and this was the 
 dining-room, and this circular mosaic at the end is the 
 place where the emperors used to sit, — and very likely 
 lie, if they ever got " under the table," — and this is 
 the bath-room, and this is the academy where every 
 day a poet read a poem, or a philosopher or historian 
 an essay, before the emperor ; and at last the archaeolo- 
 gist sees that you are shaking with laughter, and, 
 having previously found you more than sentimental 
 enough on other occasions over other ruins, he thinks 
 you are laughing at his English, and stops short and 
 says, " What are you doing ? what have you the mat- 
 ter ? " And then you, that is I, sink down into a 
 thicket of purple foxglove, and begin to sneeze violent- 
 ly (for rose-cold happens in these days, because Italy 
 is one great garden in blossom). Then I try to ex- 
 plain that I think it the funniest thing in life to see 
 a ruin so scrubbed up and put in such horribly good 
 order; that there is such an eminently French look 
 about it all, that it seems to belong to the Rue St. Ho- 
 nore, and to have nothing whatever to do with Rome 
 either ancient or modern; and that I very much 
 doubt if ever an emperor set his foot in it ! Then the 
 archaeologist, being the gentlest little soul in the world, 
 loses his temper, and says, " You are very provokking " ; 
 and that completes my nervous amusement, and all is 
 u up " for that day. However, when I was fairly under- 
 ground, walking along an old street, many feet beneath 
 the landscape garden, and looking into stuccoed room 
 after room, and up steep stone staircases, on one of 
 which it seems to me quite probable that Caligula was 
 killed, I found my usual faith and reverence reviving, 
 and patched up a sort of truce with my archaeologist. 
 But I shall never forget the comical effect of that 
 first look at the palace of the Caesars. 
 
 Among other good things of those last days in Rome 
 was an illumination of the Venus of the Capitol: day- 
 time too ! It happened on this wise. We went to the 
 
I9 2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 room at just that one minute of noon, when the sun 
 flooded in through the upper panes of the window on 
 the right, and lit up the whole statue with a positively 
 supernatural color. Even the custode exclaimed he had 
 never, in all the years before, happened to hit that pre- 
 cise moment and such a sun. The face smiled, and the 
 right arm trembled a little as the sunlight flickered 
 over it. We stood breathless and silent, and it would 
 not have surprised us in that instant to have heard a 
 voice from the lips. On the left of the Venus stands 
 a dear little girl in marble, looking like anybody's little 
 girl in the next street, only that her gown is all one 
 great square piece of something gathered up in what 
 were folds in those days, but would look uncommonly 
 bunchy, I think, if we were to try them now. She is 
 holding a little bird up in her arms, to keep it safe from 
 a snake which stretches up behind to reach it. We 
 wanted to wait till the sun had come to the little girl's 
 head, but we had not time ; so we ran to take one 
 more look at the black marble Centaurs, and the In- 
 fant Hercules, and then went home. 
 
 At the last, the leaving Rome was quite picturesque. 
 We went at night ; for of the two evils, to ride all 
 night seemed less than to get up at 4 a. m. and ride 
 all day in the heat. Poor little Marianina had haunted 
 the hotel all day ; running in and out to see if I did 
 not want something done, and finally standing in the 
 dining-room door while we took our tea, and looking 
 at me with the piteous eyes of a dumb animal. Every 
 now and then she would say, " Iddio mio ! Iddio mio ! 
 signora mia ! " till I could not stand it, and had fair- 
 ly to pretend to be stern, and send her off. I said to 
 her though, " If I were rich, Marianina, I would take 
 you with me." " 0, but you are rich, signora mia! " 
 she said, with the tears in her eyes. Poor soul, I think 
 nobody has ever been very kind to her before, and this 
 one month with me (with good wages and nothing to 
 do ! ) has been the one festa of her life. Giovanni, the 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 193 
 
 girls' old courier, went with us to the station, and 
 Marianina, who had insisted on carrying my bundle 
 and bag, appeared with a cousin to carry the bun- 
 dle ; so we filed up past the little garden and the sol- 
 diers and out among the fire-flies, quite a procession. 
 Marianina knelt on the step of the car till the bell 
 struck and the guard pulled her off"; then she kissed 
 our hands and walked slowly away, looking over her 
 shoulder at the guard out of one eye, and at me out of 
 the other ! The guard said something to his fellow- 
 guard about her beauty, and snapped the door, and 
 we were off, — we three women, good friends, good 
 travellers, — off for Yenice, with Eome written on our 
 hearts ! 
 
 If there be any greater misery short of rheumatic 
 fever than to ride all night in the cars, I do not know 
 what it is. So long as there is daylight, and one can 
 see that there are peace and dry land and homes and 
 human beings to the right and left, railroad riding is 
 bearable ; but the minute I am in the dark, every 
 whistle sounds like the shriek of fiends, every jolt and 
 jar seem to me the wrenches of a rack on which I am 
 being torn ; and when people sleep on either side of 
 my misery, I am aggravated to that degreee that I am 
 dangerous. Each time I spend such a night, I think I 
 will never spend another, come what will ; but by the 
 time the next occasion arrives, I buy my ticket, and go 
 on board as docilely as the best sleeper among you. 
 And I dare say,- before I see you again, I shall have 
 spent a month, all told, in night railroading. It seems 
 to be considered the thing to do here. 
 
 At Foligno the cocks crew,' and the passengers got 
 out and ate, and we could see what color the fields 
 were. Then began a royal progress through a garden ; 
 all the way to Ancona, four hours, nothing but wheat- 
 fields and vineyards ; in the wheat-fields, scarlet pop- 
 pies and purple foxglove, and bright blue something, I 
 don't know what, but as we dashed by it looked like 
 
 9 M 
 
I94 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 bachelor's-buttons flying off in the air. Under the 
 vines, which were trained on trees, were such fields 
 of crimson clover as you would not believe in if I 
 were to tell you about them. Fields of crimson pe- 
 onies set close as they could stand would not be more 
 crimson. In Ancona I found some peasant-women 
 who had walked into town with huge loads of this 
 clover on their heads, and were resting by the roadside. 
 I jumped out of the carriage, and asked them for one 
 of the flowers. 0, how brown and handsome the 
 women were, and how they laughed when I broke off 
 one blossom and laid it carefully in my book ! I shall 
 slip a bit of it in this letter, and you can see for your- 
 self what fields would look like where such clover as 
 this flowered in spikes three inches long ! We liked 
 Ancona, but did not see so much of it as we should if 
 we had not gone straight into our beds at 9 a. m. 
 and slept till 1 p. m. ! It is enough to make an engi- 
 neer officer's mouth water for a war, to see such hills 
 and such fortifications. From Trajan's day till now it 
 seems somebody or other has always been building 
 forts there, and somebody else firing at them. No 
 wonder. The very sight of the place is a temptation, 
 and the build of it as much a proof of the divine 
 intent of war, as flesh-teeth in animals. We saw Tra- 
 jan's arch, and a statue to Cavour, and a cathedral up 
 in the air at tiptop of hills and forts and town and all, 
 and a gay-looking theatre where Faust was to be played 
 that night, and ever so many nice shops with muslin 
 waists and straw things, which we wanted to buy, and 
 a man peddling boiled dinner round in a big iron pot in 
 a handcart. Yes, really boiled beef and peas and pota- 
 toes, and it smelled savorily ; and a poor ragged crea- 
 ture came out of a forlorn house and bought a plateful, 
 while we were looking on. Then we bundled into a 
 little cockle-shell of a boat, we and our five trunks, 
 and were rowed off to the steamer, where we found 
 an American family at dinner in the cabin, as if they 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 195 
 
 had lived there all their lives, — a thin, yellow mamma, 
 with tight hair, which savored of sewing-societies and 
 rigid principles ; a papa who was all gray, grizzled good- 
 nature ; and a miss who»dicl French for them both : and 
 they had been on the Nile all winter, and were just 
 from Corfu ; and were in Madeira the winter before ; 
 and, dear me, for all that, how very inexperienced and 
 uninformed they looked ! 
 
 Almost as far as we could see the shores of Ancona, 
 we could see the bright patches of the clover-fields. 
 They gradually faded from crimson to claret, and then 
 at last looked like dark woods in the dim distance. I 
 remembered Mrs. Howe's "I stake my life on the 
 red ! " Wonderful color, which makes such road for 
 itself through space. 
 
 Think of our not getting up in time to catch the first 
 glimpse of Venice rising from the sea ! It was stupid, 
 but we might as well own up ; we did n't do it. How- 
 ever, it looked odd and unreal enough when we did 
 get on deck. We were squeezing along in water that 
 felt thick, — piles all about us, as much land as water, 
 and not enough of either to make it seem like anything 
 set down in geographies; and the bell-towers and 
 domes in sight, like a gray mirage against the sky. 
 Somehow I could not feel as I expected to. G-enerally 
 you don't, I find. I felt more like Mrs. Partington 
 than like Rogers, or any other man of them all who 
 has touched bottom in Venetian romance. If I had 
 opened my mouth, I am afraid I should have exclaimed, 
 like the worthy female above named : " Laws sakes 
 alive ! What an awful freshet they must have had ! 
 And what on airth are these poor people going to do, 
 supposin' they can get there, which seems no ways 
 likely ? " Then, when we began to be surrounded by 
 the dismallest black craft I ever saw, uncanny enough 
 to have come straight from the Styx, and I was told 
 exultingly by my companions, " There are the gondo- 
 las ! " I was still more " taken down." I could n't 
 
196 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA FELLER, 
 
 say either that they looked unlike the photographs of 
 them, and that was the most provoking part of it. I 
 can't tell you how comical and melancholy they looked 
 to me that morning, — and look still, for that matter. 
 The body of a hearse set down low in the middle of a 
 gigantic peaked snow-shoe, the whole black and sticky, 
 and stamped with sepulchral designs. It is an under- 
 stood thing now, that I am not to be expected to " ride 
 in that kind of kerridge " again. Once I tried it, but 
 I wriggled and stumbled out instantly, and told the 
 girls if they were going with me, that hearse-top must 
 be taken off. Rain or shine, I will take my chance 
 with an umbrella. When this top is off, a gondola 
 becomes the most fascinating of boats. I could glide 
 about forever in them , and you have the feeling all 
 the time here that the next minute the whole city may 
 go under, and perhaps you can pick up a survivor or 
 two. So it seems well to be on hand with your boat. 
 I suppose I shall become accustomed to this miracle 
 of a stone city at anchor. We are to stay a month, 
 and I must begin to do something else besides try to 
 look under the houses, which is all I- have done yet. 
 Even the floors seem to me to go up and down like the 
 old " China " I came over in. If I were not an uncom- 
 monly good sailor, I should be seasick all the time ; 
 and when I am walking in what they call streets 
 (Heaven save the mark ; they are just cracks in the 
 walls, that is all : a big soldier and I nearly got wedged 
 trying to pass each other in one yesterday, and I had 
 on no hoop at all), I half expect to " slump through " 
 at every step. As for the Doge's palace, that 's another 
 blow! It may be imposing ; I suppose Buskin knows; 
 but somehow it won't impose on me, and I can't get it 
 to ! It looks low and undignified, and the " edging " 
 at top is not half so good in effect as I have seen round 
 summer-houses at home. And the windows are not 
 in line, nor sufficiently out of line (like our dear old 
 up-and-down windows in Bcme) to be picturesque; 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 197 
 
 and the colonnades look to me very shoppy ; and there, 
 you see, I am, and, like Martin Luther, " I can no 
 more " ; and I suppose you will think there is no fun 
 at all in having such an unappreciative friend in Ven- 
 ice, especially if she does not know enough to keep 
 quiet about the sacred things she is too ignorant to 
 admire. I have been up and down the Grand Canal 
 twice, and seen more old palace fronts than I can count. 
 They are fantastic and gorgeous, and it all looks Ara- 
 bian Nights-ish; but I cannot make it look to me 
 otherwise than overloaded and mixed. All the time I 
 find myself recalling the stern simplicity and beauty 
 and grandeur of arches and walls and churches in 
 Rome, and Yenice seems to me tawdry. This is at 
 end of the second day, however ; so it is premature. 
 We have begun to read aloud the " Stones of Venice," 
 and we are going to be praise worthily conscientious in 
 attention to all that Ruskin tells us is admirable ; so at 
 the end of our month I may be as enthusiastic an ad- 
 mirer of the city as he. But the one thing I expect to 
 be made really happy by, and to bear away with me 
 to keep the rest of my life, is the color of Titian. 
 Michael Angelo is the god of shape; I think Titian 
 must be of color ; and no wonder, when he fed on 
 such sunsets. Last night, beside all else, we had a 
 rainbow over the sunset. It broke up and floated 
 about in pieces ; and the Doge's palace looked like am- 
 ber in the yellow light ; and on the three great scarlet 
 flagstaffs in St. Mark's were three huge flags, which 
 floated from the tops of the staffs to the ground, — 
 green and red and white, so that all things seemed 
 turning to rainbow. 
 
 We are most comfortably established at the Hotel 
 Vittoria, not on the Grand Canal, thank Heaven! 
 
 When at first N said that she did not dare to stay 
 
 on the Grand Canal, because she feared too much sea 
 air, I was quite dismayed. But now I am thankful 
 enough to have dry land ; that is, a stone floor laid on 
 
198 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 piles, on one side of our house. I look down from my 
 window into one of the cracks called streets ; the people 
 look as if they were being threaded into the Scriptural 
 needle's eye, and a hand-organ looks like a barricade. 
 Yesterday I threw down four soldi to a man who was 
 grinding at one under my window, and made signs to 
 him to go away, for I was almost frantic with the noise 
 of seven different bells ringing at the same time. I am 
 in mortal terror now to think of my indiscretion, for 
 that man, having discovered the " vally of peace and 
 quiet " to me, I presume will become a regular pen- 
 sioner on my bounty for the rest of my stay. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA FELLER. 
 
 199 
 
 Venice, Wednesday, June 2, 1869. 
 
 THERE is so much to tell you about here, that I 
 see plainly my only way will be to keep a sort of 
 journal, and if, so doing, I make my letter into a book, 
 I hope enough of the color of the days will get into its 
 pages to repay you for struggling through them. We 
 finished up our May with a christening ! — Venetian 
 twins, in the church of San Giovanni e Palo, called in 
 the guide-book vernacular (if there be such a thing as 
 vernacular for men who write guide-books, bless 
 them !) " the Westminster Abbey of Venice." 
 
 We had wandered about among the tombs of the 
 Doges, and the statues of generals, and the altars and the 
 candles, and the pictures and the scaffoldings, and the 
 workmen and mortar, and the begging men and boys 
 and old women, till we were perfectly exhausted, and 
 did not care whether Venice ever had a Doge or not, 
 or if the beggars died of starvation at our feet ; and 
 we were just going off, when we saw a woman hurry- 
 ing into the church with a glass box in her arms. 
 
 P , who had seen them before, exclaimed, " Oh ! oh ! 
 
 there is a baby to be baptized ! " and we almost ran 
 towards the woman. A baby indeed ! there were two 
 babies, rolled up tight, like mummies, to their very 
 throats ; little knit caps on their heads, which were 
 about as big and red as Baldwin apples, and rolled about 
 from side to side as if the stems wouldn't last long. 
 The box was perhaps a foot and a half or two feet long, 
 and a foot high, — a wooden framework, with knobs at 
 the corners like bedpost tops ; the sides of glass, and 
 holes around the edges in the wood-work to let in the 
 air. The babies were twins, and were just one day old ! 
 
zoo ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 The woman set the box down on a bench by the wall 
 as indifferently as if it had been a bundle of old clothes, 
 and walked away. There they lay, the two poor little 
 gasping things, all alone in this huge church, with effi- 
 gies of dead Doges and great equestrian statues all about 
 them. I never supposed anything so uncanny could hap- 
 pen to one in the first forty-eight hours after getting into 
 the world, even if one had the luck to land in Venice ! 
 
 P and I stood and watched the poor little creatures ; 
 
 they hardly seemed human, though their eyes were really 
 bright and they were unusually wide-awake-looking 
 babies for their time of life. One of them was quite 
 uncomfortable, and gasped often as if it would cry if the 
 bandages were not too tight ; the other, which had a 
 red string in its cap, and by that token I thought was 
 the older of the two, seemed to look upon the grimaces 
 of his brother with positive philosophical scorn. He 
 would look him steadily in the eye for a minute, and 
 his mouth seemed quite pursed up with contempt for 
 such babyishness. Presently the woman came back, 
 and with her a priest, slouchy and unneat, with a pur- 
 ple vestment slipped on over his old coat ; a little rag- 
 ged boy carrying a candle ; and a stout handsome fellow, 
 evidently a workman, whom I took to be the father. 
 It turned out afterward that he was only the god- 
 father, which relieved my mind of some anxiety, be- 
 cause I did not at all like the stolid, uninterested way 
 in which he looked down on the baby's face while he 
 held it. The father was in the sacristy through the 
 whole ceremony, and did not so much as peep out. 
 The woman who brought the babies was evidently a 
 servant, and there was no attempt at holiday attire 
 about her ; in fact, the whole atmosphere of the thing 
 would have led you to suppose that baptism of twins 
 was an every-day thing to them all, and it was much as 
 ever they could do to spare time for it. Fancy the 
 group, — the priest, the little boy with the candle, the 
 heavy godfather holding the baby, the listless ser- 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2 oi 
 
 vant, and two eager and horrified American women 
 looking on ! An old beggar-woman hobbled up too, 
 and stood near. The other poor baby meantime was 
 left alone in its glass-walled bed half-way down the 
 church; the door ajar, and nobody to watch! Such 
 a chance to steal a baby ! The priest mumbled and 
 galloped over a Latin service; once in a few min- 
 utes the little boy said something which sounded like 
 "]STan! Nan! " The priest put a great pinch of salt 
 into the poor little thing's mouth, breathed on it, put 
 oil in its ears, on its breast, and on the back of its neck, 
 the godfather holding it bolt upright with the poor 
 little one-day-old spine bending and lopping in all di- 
 rections ! The sacristan spilt some of the oil, and the 
 priest almost laughed out ; then they all laughed ; and 
 the servant took twin No. 1 back to the case, and 
 brought up No. 2. But we did not stay to see the 
 ceremony over again ; it was too horrible. 
 
 The only things I shall remember about this church 
 are these twin babies ; the ornamental effigy of a gen- 
 eral, who died of grief after a defeat in battle ; and a 
 fine Gothic arch in the wall over a sarcophagus, — " the 
 tomb of an unknown person" says Murray. It is won- 
 derful, the spell of that " unknown person." One day 
 in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, I found a grave 
 without a stone to mark it, and white violets growing 
 above. I am not sure that the white violet I brought 
 away from that grave has not a voice sweeter than 
 that from the grave of Shelley ! Who can tell why ? 
 
 To-day we have had a picturesque day : first, the 
 school of San Rocco, three rooms full of Tintoretto's pic- 
 tures, about Avhich, since I do not like many of them, 
 and am not competent to speak, I hold my tongue. 
 
 Next we went to the church of San Crisostomo ; and 
 here is a picture, by Giovanni Bellini, with which one 
 can form an intimate friendship ! I should like to spend 
 mornings with these saints : St. Jerome, high up on a 
 rock, with his book ; poor harassed St. Augustine, in 
 9* 
 
2C2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 his mitre and vestments, on the right ; and on the left, 
 St. Christopher with the loveliest baby boy astride on 
 his shoulders, holding on tight by one little hand to 
 Christopher's black hair. 0, it is delicious ! but then 
 it won't sound so, and it is stupid to take up your time 
 with empty names of things. 
 
 When we left San Crisostomo we supposed we 
 were going directly home. Surely we had seen enough 
 for one day ; but as we turned into a narrow canal we 
 found all the houses decorated with flags, and the flags 
 trimmed with black. " Signora," said Luigi, " there 
 is a great funeral in the church on that street." Now 
 a funeral was the very thing we had wanted to see ! 
 We had seen how Venetians began, and we had curios- 
 ity as to their end ! We had asked Luigi, the day before, 
 if he could not find a funeral for us, and he had replied 
 quite sadly that funerals were just now out of season. 
 Nobody died in Venice in the spring ! We did not 
 wonder that nobody wanted to ; but still it seemed a 
 little queer, looked at from a statistical point of view, 
 that nobody did. 
 
 However, here was a funeral, ready to his hand, and 
 a grand one too. We hurried down the little street ; 
 every bouse had the national flag hanging from a win- 
 dow, and the staff wreathed with crape ; people were 
 all hurrying in the same direction ; in a few moments 
 we saw a bridge crowded with men and women, all 
 looking eagerly down the canal ! " 0," said we, " we 
 are just in time; the funeral cortege is coming up 
 in gondolas " ; so we pushed and elbowed in among 
 them, and looked down the canal too ! Nothing to be 
 seen, and while we were looking, the crowd dissolved 
 and left us. That is the most mysterious thing about 
 an Italian crowd ; it gathers dense and black and reso- 
 lute in five seconds from nowhere, and in five seconds 
 more it has gone like a cloud, and no trace of it left, 
 and why it went or why it came you will never know, 
 neither does it know itself! 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 203 
 
 Again and again I have asked a man or a woman 
 why they were waiting, and they have answered with 
 a laugh, " Because there are many people here ! " 
 Lamb-like children ! 
 
 The church was near and we ran there, hoping to 
 catch the funeral yet. The walls were hung with 
 black ; great pyramids of white flowers on the altar ; 
 a mass going on, and many people kneeling; so we 
 sat down. In a few minutes two men came behind 
 us with a ladder, and began to take down the black 
 hangings ! This looked unpromising, and at last we 
 did what it would have been sensible to do at first, 
 asked if there were a funeral to take place there. It 
 had happened at nine o'clock in the morning, and now, 
 I suppose, they were saying masses for the soul ! The 
 meD flew about, tearing down the black cambric with 
 most unseemly haste, and scattering dust on every- 
 body's head, and we walked away quite crestfallen. 
 
 It was a most picturesque little street, about six feet 
 wide, and set thick with stores on each side; bread- 
 stores with piles, of all imaginable shapes and colors, of 
 bread on the open window-sills, (everybody keeps store 
 on the window-sill or the door-step here ! ) great bas- 
 kets of boiled beets, round and flat like pancakes ; and 
 young potatoes, size of nutmegs, also boiled ready to 
 eat, were on every corner. Stockings and lace collars 
 and China toys and yellow handkerchiefs hung and 
 swung and stood and waved to right and left of the 
 beets and potatoes. A big butcher was asleep in his 
 little cupboard of a store, and on his window-sill stood 
 six round earthen cups of what I think must have been 
 the dreadful blood-puddings I have heard of; it looked 
 simply like blood cooled, with stiffened bubbles on top ! 
 It made you faint to think that it could be put there to 
 sell to human beings. Then came a fish trattoria, — a 
 scene for Rembrandt to paint, — a dark cavern of a shop, 
 lit only from one door and window in front; a stone 
 furnace in the rear, from which came a fiery red glow; 
 
204 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 two men, with arms bared to the shoulder, standing in 
 this firelight, frying fish! crockery plates set up in 
 rows on stone ledges above the fire ; and flat wicker- 
 work platters of fish, round, long, flat, whole, sliced, 
 curled, straight, floured, and peppered, ready to fry, 
 standing in tottering piles in the window ! This was a 
 picture, and I stayed so long to look at it I nearly got lost 
 going back to the gondola alone. Then I bought out of 
 another window a big round cracker, which I hoped 
 was made out of unbolted wheat ; but it proved sour 
 and uneatable, like everything else we find here, except 
 the dazzling white fine bread of the hotels, which is 
 sweet simply because it is lifeless, and has no more 
 nutrition in it than so much cobweb. 
 
 As we rowed home, Luigi told us all about the fu- 
 neral. He had been gossiping with the street in our 
 absence, and had found out that it was the funeral of 
 a Countess Somebody, who had been very patriotic, 
 had run great risks in the times of the wars, had been 
 three times in the Austrian prisons, and had lost most 
 of her property in consequence ! She was much beloved 
 by the people, hence the flags and the kneeling crowds 
 at the mass. Some day he is to take us to see the house 
 in which she died ; though why we want to see it I can- 
 not imagine. 
 
 Sunday the Sixth. — 0, if I could but catch these 
 swift days and clip their wings ! Dear people, will you 
 not all come to Yenice in spring, some year of your 
 years, and have our Luigi for gondolier, and be as con- 
 tent as we ? All I can write you is dusty, dry. You 
 do not know in the least what I have seen. For in- 
 stance, on the Thursday which followed the Wednesday 
 of the good Countess's funeral, did I not spend a whole 
 forenoon in the rooms of Rieti, a Jew with spectacles, 
 who hires a palace to keep store in, and who fattens on 
 the decay of Venetian families, buying up every shred 
 of thing which they have to sell, and setting them, one 
 above another, in these palace rooms, to be sold again 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 205 
 
 to American men and women ? And would not the 
 catalogue of the beautiful and weird and uncanny 
 old things 1 saw there fill a volume ? Chairs and tables 
 and chests and sideboards and mirrors, from time of 
 Doges down ! Glass and china and tapestry ; work- 
 boxes and crickets and candlesticks and pans and busts 
 and gravestones k. Yes, old gravestones there were, 
 and hall lamps, and an old medicine-chest, out of which 
 came dusty scent of poisons which helped to thin out 
 the eleventh century, I am sure! The old leather 
 case was dropping and crumbling to pieces, and the 
 green baize lining seemed half turned to fungus. It 
 was most curiously studded with silver nails, and surely 
 belonged to a physician of degree. 
 
 There are six of these stores of antiquity and works 
 of art here, and we have been to four of them, for my 
 lucky friends have a house, and a room to be refur- 
 nished. I feel now as if I had had " the run " of all the 
 Venetian palaces from the tenth to the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. I have lifted off the lids of their soup-tureens, 
 tried the hinges and handles of their sideboards, and 
 pulled out all their secret drawers. I only wish I had a 
 thousand dollars to spend to-morrow morning in small 
 articles which would never be missed out of these be- 
 wildering confusions. I would buy for one of you a 
 stool, whose seat should be crimson, and should be held 
 up by a_black Moor, a cunning little fellow six years 
 old, called Abdalla, I " calculate," and clothed as to 
 the loins in a tunic of green and silver. Should you 
 mind sitting on him ? He looks very happy, and shows 
 all his teeth. For another, you who give little dinners, 
 I would buy a fish, a China fish, to hold your salmon ; 
 the platter is gay with flowers ; the fish is purple, — 
 mullet, perhaps ; at any rate it is purple and silver, and 
 a lemon at top of him for a handle, and by the lemon 
 you lift off his upper half, and there will be your sal- 
 mon ; and what Doge ever had so good a fish out of it 
 before you ! For you who have made a million since I 
 
2o6 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 came away — ah f for you, my dear, there is a set o$ 
 furniture in ebony inlaid with white ivory tablets, and 
 the tablets covered with fantastic designs and patterns, 
 like fine etchings ! Such a little wardrobe of drawers 
 as stands on a table of this set, three feet high, doors 
 always to be kept open, and twenty little drawers 
 ready to hold all your letters ! If you like it better, 
 there is a set of brown nut-wood inlaid more elabo- 
 rately with ivory, not an inch left plain, and all sorts 
 of carved ivory figures set in the impossible places. 
 These are four things out of thousands, but I can tell 
 you no more, because in the afternoon we went to 
 Torcello, and that is better worth talking over. 
 
 I am tempted to put in a little guide-book about 
 Torcello, because I knew so little about it myself 
 before coming here that I think some of you may be 
 equally ignorant. But I remember that I promised 
 never to do guide-book at all, and so I will not yield to 
 the temptation ! You will know that it is an island, 
 and that before Venice was Torcello, and had churches 
 and bishops and palaces ; it will be easier for you to 
 believe all this than it is for me, — though, to be sure, I 
 have seen the Cathedral and one church and a bit of 
 one palace, but, for all the rest, I find no real faith in 
 my heart. Nothing in all Rome, not even the loveliest 
 old aqueduct stones in the farthest silence of the cam- 
 pagna, ever gave me such sense of desolation, of for- 
 gotten life, as the atmosphere of this little island. We 
 sailed to it through sunshine, — swiftly too, for we had 
 taken an extra rower. The lagoon was astir with fish- 
 ing people, and the smoke of work went up from 
 Murano, as we passed it, and bells rang from old towers 
 on two other islands as we drew near Torcello. We 
 had been told that many of the great barges which we 
 had seen at sunset coming down the Grand Canal, 
 loaded with cherries and salads and artichokes, and 
 all sorts of good garden things, were bringing vegeta- 
 bles from Torcello ; so we thought we were going to 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 207 
 
 a thrifty suburb of Yenice to find soms old churches 
 we knew, but we supposed to breathe the air of to- 
 day. 
 
 We had not glided ten steps into the silent Torcello 
 canal before we felt the hush of a burial-place. So 
 low lay the fields, lapping up the slow green water, 
 that it seemed as if we might slip over at any minute, 
 and be floating above the grass. The silence was inde- 
 scribable ; old stone bridges spanned the canal, and as 
 We rowed under them the grass nodded down to us 
 from the sides and the top ! Had human feet ever 
 brushed it ? We grew afraid ; the white honeysuckle 
 was in blossom ; and raspberry-bushes, with pink flow- 
 ers, made long thickets of hedge, over which here and 
 there a scarlet pomegranate looked, as if holding court ; 
 bits of old stone-work gleamed out among these wild 
 growths; hardly more than a door-step at a time, a 
 corner-stone, or a few inches of wall, all so sunk, so 
 bedded in the green, that but for knowing that a city 
 and palaces had stood there we should have thought 
 them no more than natural stones. After a time we 
 found a house or two; then an old bell-tower rising 
 up suddenly and ghost-like in the waste, walled in as 
 if it were the keep of the powers and principalities of 
 the air ! Then we came on a little brood of ducklings, 
 — they looked more human than you could conceive, — 
 and then, after another turn, on a Custom House ! This 
 took our breath away. I do not know yet what it 
 meant. If I were the right sort of traveller I should 
 have found out. But its stone steps answered for us to 
 land on, and nobody stopped either us or the ducks 
 who stepped on shore with us ; and we all crept along 
 together. I felt somehow as if they were so much 
 safer than we. 
 
 An old woman, whom I almost believe to have been 
 alive, showed us the old church of Santa Fosca, and the 
 Cathedral. I can't tell you about them. Nobody 
 could. The church is a dome on top of a Greek cross, 
 
208 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 and a portico with tumbling pillars all around it. The 
 cathedral stands close, almost joins the church, and has 
 a floor of mosaic, which makes St. Mark's look new ; 
 high marble reading-desks ; and around the semi-circu- 
 lar apse, behind the high altar, marble seats rising up 
 in tiers one above the other, like the Coliseum ; in the 
 niddle, the Bishop's chair, and all so old that it looked 
 jrumbling, — though it never can crumble, and it is not 
 jo very old, after all, not more than a thousand years ; 
 Dut it feels, for some inexplicable reason, older than any- 
 thing I ever saw. Fresh annunciation lilies were on 
 every altar ; their odor filled the air, and drowned out 
 Ihe smell of fungus; the old woman's shoes clapped, 
 clapped at the heel with every step she took, and 
 echoed in the dark corners. 
 
 Down in the crypt there was a poor old wooden 
 Christ, all cobwebs and dust, — a most pitiful thing. As 
 we walked by she kissed it, and drew her withered 
 hands down the legs to the feet with a lingering touch 
 of tenderness and passionate devotion which I never 
 saw equalled, and which made my eyes wet for some 
 minutes. It must be that which has kept her alive in 
 Torcello, — this poor, haggard, hungry old soul. The 
 air is poison there ! It was that which drove the peo- 
 ple away, and put this melancholy end to the city; 
 only a few poor souls live there now, who are too poor 
 to live anywhere else, and cannot, perhaps, resist the 
 temptation of ground to cultivate; for green things 
 thrive and produce in Torcello, though all the children 
 look as if they had just left their beds for the first time 
 after some terrible illness. They crowded round us, 
 and begged, more by their hollow eyes than by their 
 words. I sat down in a great rough stone chair which 
 stands in an open space before the cathedral, and in 
 front of the old bit of a stone house in which the 
 Bishop lived, and gave all the children bonbons which 
 I had cribbed from our hotel dinner, — a questionable 
 charity, I know, but I had no pennies! and beggars 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 209 
 
 have such digestions in Italy, one feels less scruple 
 about giving them unwholesome sweets. 
 
 One little girl, six or seven years old, with great 
 gaunt brown eyes, and a weight of tangled auburn- 
 black hair, grasped hers firm in her little hand, and 
 never opened it. The other children were tearing 
 open the bright papers, and munching down the candy, 
 like monkeys. She looked at them wistfully, but did 
 not offer to touch hers. I explained to her that it was 
 good to eat, and tried to make her taste it; at last, 
 after I had asked her a dozen times why she did not 
 eat it, she whispered so I could but just catch the 
 words, — she was so frightened, — that she kept it for 
 her little brother ! Did n't I turn my pocket wrong 
 side out, and find one more for that little angel ? and 
 did n't she bite into it in about the shortest second ? 
 and do you think I believe in original depravity ? As 
 I turned back for my last look at the desolate grass- 
 grown piazza, and the cathedral, and the church, and 
 the bell-tower, the children were all scrambling to get 
 up into the stone chair (they call it Attila's chair, — be- 
 cause he never sat in it, I suppose) ; three were already 
 in, two more climbing up, and a poor little two-year- 
 old tugging away at one of the six legs hanging down 
 in front, and trying in vain to lift himself up by it. 
 
 Yesterday I was heroic, stayed in the house, and wrote 
 all the forenoon. In the afternoon we rowed over to 
 the Enchanted Island, that is the Lido ; the girls and 
 
 Mrs. and Miss T went into the water in Venetian 
 
 bathing-dresses, hired for two francs, and swam about 
 as if they had been brides of the Adriatic all their 
 lives ! I sat on an upper stair and watched them and 
 the sea ; mostly the sea, which was pale, soft gray in 
 the distance, and green close at my feet. There were 
 many people rowing back and forth on it, and some of 
 their sails were orange, and some looked rose-pink 
 against the sky. Why do not all sailors have orange 
 and pink sails, I wonder ? it is all a sail needs to make 
 
2 io ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 it as beautiful as a cloud, and it signifies so much 
 more. 
 
 Sunday the Thirteenth. — This Sunday was the anni- 
 versary of the adoption of the Constitution by Italy, and 
 all the houses were bright with flags ; the square of St. 
 Mark's was gay with red and green and white, and in 
 the evening there was to be music on the canal. We 
 commissioned Luigi to buy an Italian flag for our gon- 
 dola, to show our sympathy with freedom, and antici- 
 pated a fine night on the water. Alas I at six o'clock 
 the sky was black, and it thundered mutteringly in the 
 east; however, we would not be kept in, even by its 
 beginning to sprinkle as we took our seats in the gon- 
 dola; actually under umbrellas we rowed up to the 
 Eialto, and displayed our flag. Some of the gondoliers 
 saluted us as we passed, and they all looked pleased 
 and smiled. 
 
 The band was playing on a great barge in front of 
 the prefect's house, and a few determined people were 
 creeping about under umbrellas, as we were ; but it 
 was a failure. The sky grew blacker and the drops 
 bigger, and, against our wills, we went home. To be 
 out in the rain in Venice is too much to be borne by 
 the stoutest soul. To be between two fires is always 
 accounted a bad thing in battle ; but to be between 
 two waters is as bad. G-oing home we passed a grave- 
 looking American family, singing psalm-tunes in their 
 gondola. It sounded very pleasantly, but I could not 
 resist the suspicion that it was a kind of a sop to their 
 consciences for being out on the Grand Canal so near 
 sunset of a Sunday. 
 
 Wednesday went for looking over photographs in 
 the morning, and for three or four not especially inter- 
 esting churches in the afternoon ; but you know, with- 
 out my taking time to say it, that simply to go from one 
 place to another, in this wonderful sea-city, is a delight 
 in itself. If it waited for me to say where we should 
 go, we should never go anywhere. It never seems to 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2 II 
 
 me to make the least difference. I feel as if the gondola 
 knew, and would go of itself. I should sink down, if I 
 were alone, and give no orders to the invisible Luigi. 
 
 Luckily for me, N and P are more wise. N 
 
 is our guide, and has always something to propose for each 
 day, which is just the best thing to do. Thanks to her, 
 we have in this four weeks seen Yenice most thorough- 
 ly. On Thursday we spent the whole morning in the 
 Academy, with the beloved pictures. I feel that I am 
 so entirely ignorant of art, that I have hardly right to 
 say what I think about any -picture. But I am sure of 
 one thing : pictures and poems are one. All the pic- 
 tures I have seen which have impressed me are poems ; 
 and I see that even to my ignorance it becomes clearer 
 and clearer in what measure they are written. Also, I 
 see that it is as silly to like, or even to be ready to like, 
 all the pictures painted by one man, simply because they 
 are his, as it is to believe that one's favorite poet could 
 not write a poor thing. Did not Browning write " Mr. 
 Sludge the Medium," and Wordsworth " Peter Bell" ? 
 I am wondering about many things in these days, of 
 which I have nobody here to ask, and no books to help 
 me. I am sure that if one knew literature and art well 
 enough, close parallels could be drawn out between 
 poems and pictures ; and I wonder if there would not 
 be historical agreements too. Some of you who know, 
 write and tell me what you think about this. Now, I 
 find Carpaccio to be a man who painted ballads ! All 
 his pictures have the ring and the movement, with the 
 light touch. There is a series of them in the Academy, 
 which tell the story of St. Ursula. I sit and read it over 
 and over and over, as you can, " How they brought the 
 G-ood News to G-hent." He does not forget what the 
 little page said, nor that on that day the maiden was ill 
 at ease ; nor that while the ambassadors asked the king 
 for the hand of his daughter, outside of the gate sat 
 an old stern woman who liked not these foreign woo- 
 ings, and muttered that ill would come. Every picture 
 
2I2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 is a complete ballad in itself; as you look at them, you 
 involuntarily walk with steps set to the sound of a 
 singer. 
 
 Then there is Bellini, whose pictures are gentle and 
 tender, and are like quaint sacred songs. Always he 
 puts at base of the pictures little angels or babies sitting 
 with crossed legs, and playing on lutes the accompani-- 
 ment to the song. Most of his pictures are called 
 "Madonna with two Saints," "Madonna with four 
 Saints," Madonna and Child," etc., etc. I always think 
 of them as " The true Song of the Day when Catharine 
 and Agatha met Mary and the Child Jesus," or " The 
 G-reeting of St. Agnes to the Infant Lord," or " The 
 Words of Sts. Jerome and Christopher to Augustine the 
 Monk." But for all this Bellini has painted many Ma- 
 donnas whose faces are like faces of wood; and one 
 frightful picture of his has in the clouds over the Madon- 
 na's head seven cherub heads of fiery scarlet, like lob- 
 ster ! There are two pictures in the Academy by a 
 Martino da Udine, a rare man of Bellini's day and 
 school, who has left only few things. One of these is the 
 Angel of the Annunciation ; the other is a Madonna 
 — both single figures, severe, alone, no accessories, but 
 an air of heaven about the one, and of sanctified earth 
 in the other, which it is good to see. I know lines in 
 Greorge Herbert — written, is it one hundred or more 
 years later ? — which are like these pictures. Titian's 
 single heads and single figures are the sonnets, either 
 solemn and slow, with the whole of the man's life con- 
 centrated into that day's voice, or vivid fiery, like the 
 passionate outpouring of one moment ! His " Presen- 
 tation of the Little Virgin at the Temple " is the picture 
 I like best of all the pictures I have yet seen, except 
 the " Last Communion of St. Jerome," by Domenichino, 
 in Rome. It is a grand epic poem. There is the 
 whole of Jerusalem and the worship of the Temple in 
 the figures of the high-priests, all Jewry in the crowd 
 below, and all Christianity and redemption in the figure 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 213 
 
 of the little Virgin. All my life, blue will be more sacred 
 to me by reason of this little Virgin's gown ! And as for 
 red, it has always been to me like the key-note of a uni- 
 verse of hidden things, like a very spell in the air ; and 
 now I know that Titian had been taken inside of its mys- 
 tery, and signed with its sign. Every day I see men 
 in the Academy sitting down calmly to copy Titian's 
 red ! and I wonder at their being suffered to go about 
 without keepers. 
 
 From the Academy we went to the house of two old 
 
 Venetian ladies, sisters of an artist whom P and 
 
 ]ST knew when they were here before, and who 
 
 made a copy of one of Bellini's pictures for them. She 
 was sick and deformed and poor, but had great talent as 
 a copyist, and had worked with great industry, for all 
 the rooms of the little house were hung with her draw- 
 ings and paintings. She died some two years ago, 
 and these two poor old sisters were so gratified and 
 touched at her being remembered and sought out by 
 strangers for whom she had painted, that it was hard 
 to know what to say to them, especially if you did 
 not know many words of their language ! But the 
 sight of the house and their way of living was most 
 interesting. After all, one such interior picture is 
 worth scores of common outside views; they must 
 once have " seen better days," — everything in their 
 manner and surroundings showed this. They have 
 now no servant, and one sister could not see us this 
 morning. We knew by the stir and the odors that 
 she was cooking their dinner ; and who but she could 
 it have been who snatched and hid the string of onions 
 which, when we arrived, was hanging on the hat-rack 
 in the front hall, — by side of an old cotton umbrella ! — 
 and when we went away was no longer there ? The 
 sister we saw was perhaps seventy years old. Her 
 eyes were faded, and her lips very shaky, but she 
 must once have been handsome; and the woman had 
 not by any means died out of her old heart, for when 
 
2i 4 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 I recognized as her portrait the face of a handsome 
 woman of not more than thirty-five, among her sister's 
 paintings on the walls of the little parlor, her wrinkled 
 cheeks flushed with pleasure, and she smiled a little as 
 she might have smiled the day the picture was painted. 
 
 She wore, just as such pitiful " genteel" old ladies do 
 at home, — and, I suppose, all the world over, — skimpy 
 black clothes, gray with age, and a forlorn, dusty black 
 lace thing on the back of her head, — they always 
 look more like palls than like caps on that kind of old 
 lady. They asked high prices for their sister's pictures, 
 and I am afraid they will not sell all of them. The 
 girls bought a lovely little picture of a picturesque pal- 
 ace on the Grand Canal, at which we look almost every 
 afternoon. They could hardly have found a more vivid 
 bit of Venice to carry away with them than this little 
 sketch by the poor dead Eafifaella. 
 
 In the afternoon we went into the house of another 
 Venetian family. Such a contrast ! This family's 
 name is Griovanelli ; and the Prince Griovanelli mar- 
 ried a Contarini, and, of the Contarinis, five have been 
 doges ! and the house in which this Griovanelli and 
 Contarini live is the most splendid palace in Venice. 
 Did we not do well to go to the poor old sisters first? 
 It was like the one bit of red which Titian throws in 
 at last, in the distance of his pictures, which brings all 
 the other colors out. But you see plainly that of this 
 palace I cannot tell you much, because there is a limit 
 to a letter, though you may think I don't know it ; 
 neither did I half tell you about the other little home. 
 I shall remember it quite as long as the grand one. 
 Mrs. Contarini Griovanelli is the only palace-owning 
 lady that I have envied. I would not have taken one 
 of the superb palaces in G-enoa as a gift, if I were to be 
 compelled to stay in their great ghostly rooms. But 
 this Griovanelli palace, superb as it is, is cosey. Think 
 of that ! — a cosey palace ! — a boudoir of blue, blue 
 damask from ceiling to floor, and a ceiling like a hollow 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 215 
 
 shell, and a rounding blue satin sofa, on which she sits 
 and mends her husband's shirts. How do I know ? 
 By this token, that in a costly glass toy on a little 
 table before the sofa, and among a thousand dollars' or 
 so worth of other trifles in the way of baskets and 
 statuettes and boxes, were three old shirt-bosom but- 
 tons ! ! close to her work-basket, — which might have 
 been yours or mine, it was so neat and simple. Their 
 bedroom is regal, — ebony and yellow damask ; but — 
 O the but, even in a palace ! — on this gorgeous ebony 
 stood, in easy reach from one of the yellow satin beds, 
 cold-cream and — a bottle of magnesia ! Heartburn, 
 you see, even for a descendant of doges, in this dream 
 of a palace. I, who never had heartburn, and would 
 die before I took magnesia, chuckled and passed on. 
 
 A crimson room, satin tapestry, on walls with raised 
 velvet figures ; a yellow-and-white room, the tapestry 
 woven to fit, with the coat of arms wrought in here 
 and there; a picture-gallery hung with claret velvet, 
 and holding rare pictures, — Titian and Veronese and 
 Bellini and Durer and Yan Dyck and Rembrandt; a 
 dining-room with carvings and purple velvet and China, 
 which was .a study in itself; a sitting-room with a 
 grand piano and a marvellous bird-cage of gay lattice- 
 work alternating with transparencies, on which were 
 painted morning-glories and honeysuckles! In the 
 cage, seven little Japanese birds, drab and scarlet and 
 gray ; on the piano, cigars of several sorts, ready for 
 the prince after dinner. This is a skeleton glimpse for 
 you of the G-iovanelli's ways of living. 
 
 I shall never forget the glow on the faces of some of 
 Titian's portraits of doges, which hang in the crimson 
 room ; not all the heat of the red tapestry of Lyons 
 can dull the glow of the orange and red mantles, or 
 approach the kindling fire in the faces. 
 
 " Is there a library ? " said we. 
 
 " No," said the courteous and elegant creature, called 
 servant, who had showed us his master's house. And 
 
8i6 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 somehow I instantly felt as if it had been quite imper- 
 tinent to ask, and as if perhaps, after all, books were a 
 superfluous indulgence. The prince must read, for he 
 is " Syndic of Venice " and " Senator of Italy " ; but 
 not a book did we see, except some ornamental ones to 
 match the crimson furniture. 
 
 Yesterday, two more churches, — San Zaccaria, which 
 is the first church in Venice I have liked ; and San Gior- 
 gio degli Schiavoni, a little one-room, upper-chamber 
 sort of a church, in an out-of-the-way quarter where 
 are nine quaint old pictures by my favorite ballad-man, 
 Carpaccio, sung when he was young ; with too many 
 adjectives, but ringing, ringing like all the rest. I 
 shall grow to remember his things better than any 
 others if I study them much more. That also is like the 
 hold a ballad gets on you ; it haunts your downsitting 
 and uprising, as no other verse can. 
 
 I must not forget to tell you about Murano. We 
 rowed over there on Saturday afternoon to see the 
 famous glass-works. The minute you get away from 
 Venice, and row off towards the other islands, it all 
 looks more and more unreal ; the islands look like noth- 
 ing but mirages, and Venice itself looks like a gigantic 
 colored phantasm, just that minute set up against the 
 sky by some magician. You have not the least faith 
 in getting anywhere, unless possibly you might be cast 
 up. gondola and all, like a bit of sea-weed, at foot of 
 the Apennines or Alps or Himalayas, whichever they 
 are, that stand up sharp and real along the coast, 
 whether south or west I do not know, — I can't find 
 out, I never shall ; but there they are, the only actual- 
 looking things to be seen. You feel as if the world 
 began at their base, and you were drifting around outside, 
 part of a great miracle-play. This is not wild talk ; it is 
 the way everybody must feel after half an hour of gon- 
 dola in these waters. Perhaps they do not analyze their 
 bewilderment so closely as I have ; but if they did they 
 would find it all there. I see it all in their faces as they 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 217 
 
 glide by, even in the most stolid and Jewish of them 
 all. 
 
 Well, after three quarters of an hour of this, we 
 bumped up against a wharf, which did not really elude 
 us and fade out of sight, and a very tangible old beggar 
 hooked us fast, and we stepped out on the thin crust of 
 stone, over Murano piers, and began to look for glass- 
 houses. Of course we were pounced on instantly by 
 Murano loafers, who scented our errand and our inex- 
 perience. We are a tempting-looking trio, — three not 
 bad-looking women, tolerably well dressed, and usually 
 on the broad laugh, with any amount of desire for in- 
 formation in our faces. Of course we are as plainly 
 meant for custodi and cicironi as fish are for gulls ; but 
 we are growing sharp in Venice, there is too much of 
 it here, and what with Euskin and Howells and Murray 
 and Baedeker we know so much more than the guides 
 do that we are quite justified in scorning them. How- 
 ever, in Murano we were helpless, and we were led off 
 meekly as lambs by a horrible old simpleton, who pre- 
 tended to understand us, but I think did not compre- 
 hend one word we said. Into one dark furnace-depth 
 after another we plunged, at his heels, and into aisles of 
 astonished-looking workmen, and saw them blow glass 
 bottles (just as they do in Sandwich, Massachusetts), and 
 draw out long hollow threads of fiery glass, and snap 
 it off like pipe-stems ; and we paid odd francs here and 
 there to people who h.ad not done anything to earn 
 them ; and we stood about till we ached all over and 
 got quite cross ; and then all of a sudden we " struck " 
 for lower wages and no guide ; frightened the sim- 
 pleton off our track, jumped into our gondola and 
 rowed off to the Museum ! Murano was such an un- 
 canny place, I was horribly afraid we should be turned 
 into something or other, and have to stay there all the 
 rest of our lives. It is a kind of a ghost of a poor re- 
 lation of Venice ; canals and houses and bridges, and 
 old carved corners and balconies, and black gondolas, 
 10 
 
2iS ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 but all beggarly and ghostlike. The Museum was a 
 great stalwart building which looked out of place there, 
 and fresh signs of offices of one sort and another on 
 the first floor made us afraid we had lost our way ; but 
 we soon found the custode, and he trotted us about 
 through five rooms of the most wonderful glassware 
 we ever dreamed of. 
 
 Do not suppose there is anything which cannot be 
 made of glass if you set about it in Murano : chande- 
 liers, gigantic and of really graceful shapes, all glass ; 
 tables which looked like mosaic, mirrors framed in glass, 
 and roses and convolvuluses, and green leaves wreathed 
 about them, all glass; a bonnet, with daisies on the 
 top, and openwork lace strings, all glass; a high 
 stove-pipe hat, light brown, quite pliable, nothing but 
 glass ; a portrait of an old doge, frame and all glass ; 
 portraits of Victor Emmanuel and other people by the 
 yard, run in a long stick like a stick of candy, and 
 wherever you sliced it off there would be the perfect 
 portrait, so wonderfully were the colors put in. Then 
 there were all possible shapes and sorts and sizes of 
 vases and tumblers and pitchers and cups and candle ■ 
 sticks, white and yellow and green and red and opal, 
 and lapis-lazuli and malachite ; some painted in old 
 styles, the secret of which is now lost ; some threaded 
 in and out with threads of color, or of white, as fine 
 as cobweb silk; — five rooms filled with these, and many 
 others that I do not remember. 
 
 When we came home the light was so beautiful on the 
 Grand Canal (0, if one could be permitted to call it 
 anything but a canal!) that I could not go in; so we 
 
 dropped ]ST on our watery door-step, and P ■ 
 
 and I rowed off again for the moonlight. We found a 
 great steam-yacht anchored in front of the Doge's 
 palace, and the canal gay with gondolas and music. No 
 less than the Viceroy of Egypt had come in the yacht, 
 and the Duke of Brunswick was in the hotel, and the 
 serenade was just as good for us as for them ; and we 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 219 
 
 rowed up and down till ten o'clock, and heard the whole 
 of it, and then we went home silently, so as not to break 
 up the dream. 
 
 To-day has been such a day that I have hardly cour- 
 age to try to tell it. I can only give you^he barest 
 skeleton. If I were to really describe the hours, my 
 letter would be forty pages long. 
 
 In the morning we went to the Doge's palace, stood 
 on the Doge's balcony, and looked seaward ; walked 
 over, I mean through, the Bridge of Sighs ; saw the door 
 which shut the prisoners who went to the Council of 
 Three from those who went to the Council of Ten ; 
 looked into the cell where Marino Falieri was confined, 
 and sat down on Carmagnuola's -bed. the horror of 
 those cells 1 no light except through a small round hole, 
 by which the food was put in ; the door so low I had 
 to double to step through it. The Mamertine prisons in 
 Rome were not much worse. One of these cells is still 
 lined with wood, as they all were in the days of these 
 terrors ; the guide gave me a piece which he broke off 
 in a dark corner over the door, — it is quite worm-eaten. 
 I suppose the prisoners now and then, perhaps, could 
 hear a little nibble. 
 
 Then we went up into the grand Hall of Council, and 
 saw Tintoretto's great picture of Paradise, the largest 
 picture on canvas in the world. I should hope so. It 
 
 would cover two sides of Dr. T 's church, I think ; 
 
 and what do you say to it for a conception of heaven, 
 when I tell you that even at that size it is crowded 
 with figures ; packed, jammed, wedged, they are, — the 
 saints of Tintoretto. I would rather be any kind of a 
 sinner in any other place where there was elbow-room. 
 The only thing that gave me pleasure was to see that 
 St. Mark had got his lion in. The sagacious beast is 
 looking up in St. Mark's face with such an earnest, in- 
 quiring expression, puzzled and uneasy, as if he said, 
 " Well, really, master, is it possible you like this kind 
 of thing, and do you mean to stay long ? " 
 
2 2o ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 ]STow I will take you to a concert on the Grand 
 Canal. We are in our gondola, quite close to the Vice- 
 roy's steamer; it is not quite twilight, and the lamps 
 are lit in the cabin, and the great people are at dinner. 
 Brown Egyptians, who look much like Marshpee In- 
 dians in red fezes, are clambering about in a kind of 
 busy idleness all over the boat ; and the Viceroy's little 
 boy, ten years old, also in a red fez, is on deck with 
 (lis tutor, a gray-headed old fellow, who does n't look 
 half so wise as the boy. Poor little soul, to have been 
 put through all this before twelve ! What a sucked 
 .orange his world will be before he is twenty ! I never 
 see these experienced children without thinking how 
 much better off they are who begin with mud-pies 
 and a " cubby-house " of broken crockery, as we did. 
 Did n't you ? I did, at any rate, and the consequence 
 is that here am I to-night, ! years old, but deli- 
 riously delighted and amused with the outside of the 
 Viceroy's ship, and the show, and the music, while this 
 baby of ten sat and twirled his little cane, and looked 
 on as indifferently as an old loafer. The bands of music 
 were on two gondolas which had been fastened together 
 and draped with blue and white, making a great fairy- 
 like barge, which was towed up and down by three 
 other gondolas draped in white, and rowed by gondo- 
 liers in white and black velvet. We all raced about 
 after this barge, sixty or a hundred gondolas of us, and 
 tried to get as close to it as we could, which was fool- 
 ish ; bat all people are sheep when they are in crowds. 
 This is n't quite true, however, for we did not like to 
 be in such jams, and kept moving off as well as we 
 could; but, in spite of us, we were wedged much of the 
 time. On the Viceroy's steamer was a band, — African, 
 should say, and made up two thirds of cymbals and 
 tambourines ; but it suited the fezes and the color of the 
 men, and the red and yellow and green lights with which 
 the whole ship was illuminated. Did n't we believe in 
 Aladdin just then ? I think the Viceroy lives in his 
 palace. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 221 
 
 Then came a gondola waving with green laurel- 
 bushes, with colored lanterns swinging among them, 
 This was the most beautiful of all ; on this were singers 
 who sang songs, and if they were singing still, we 
 should still be there listening to them, because to come 
 away from the Grrand Canal in Venice when Venetian 
 men are singing on the water is not in the power of 
 human beings. The Ten Commandments can be kept 
 perhaps; people are said to have done it; but this is 
 harder. 
 
 The ships in the harbor were gay with colors, and 
 there were rockets and Bengal lights and Roman can- 
 dles in all directions; and after the Viceroy and his 
 guests had done their dinner, they stepped into such 
 gondolas, — the royal gondola blue velvet and silver, 
 with six gondoliers in blue and white ; the others green 
 and purple and yellow, — and away they all rowed up 
 the Griudeca. 
 
 Later in the evening we were near the Rialto, and 
 all of a sudden the whole cortege shot past us. the 
 sweep of a gondola with six rowers ! Several of the 
 gondolas had Bengal lights at the prow, and the effect 
 of this light on the old stone fronts of the palaces and 
 on the bridge was something that sobered and saddened 
 you in a second. The very stones seemed to cry out, 
 " We are dead, we are dead." After all, Venice is a 
 ghost. The banquet is over, and these shows of to-day 
 make the old palaces scornful in their tombs, I dare 
 say. Now who could sleep after such a night? But 
 one has a duty to one's eyes ; so good by. 
 
 On Monday I went alone to the Academy, and had 
 a feast off a few pictures which I like. Do not be 
 afraid I shall tell you much about them. I have told 
 you about Titian's little Virgin in " The Presentation," 
 — have I not ? That is a picture for which one might 
 almost sell one's soul, if taken in the right moment ! 
 My love of this picture has almost cost me the loss of 
 all the others in the building, I find it so hard to leave it. 
 
222 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Then there is a St. John by Veronese, which one 
 could look at and grow happier for a lifetime • and 
 such grand old ballad pictures by Carpaccio, and lyrics 
 by Bellini, with cunning little angels playing accompani- 
 ments at the base of altars. 
 
 There is a head of Homer by Caravaggio here which 
 is grander than Milton's Hymn. The darkened air and 
 those sightless eyes ! You have a fear of blindness 
 hanging over you wherever you go, on the day in which 
 you look at this picture. 
 
 In the afternoon P and I roamed (and wriggled) 
 
 through the cracks in the walls where the shops are, 
 and looked in at the windows, and said what we would 
 like to buy, and went in and " priced" things, after 
 the manner of women, for two hours or more, but did 
 not spend any money, which I hope is set down to us 
 for righteousness. 
 
 On Tuesday was the Arsenal, not very good to tell 
 about, but worth while to see. Stacks of old armor, 
 complete suit of Henri Quatre, and a helmet of Attila's, 
 and the visor of Attila's horse among them. Some old 
 monster's instruments of torture, a thumb-screw and a 
 collar, and a pistol of poisoned arrows, and an iron hel- 
 met. I had my thumb in the screws for a minute, and 
 the guide squeezed it down for me within one of the 
 point at which I should have abjured Calvinism (if that 
 is what I believe.) There were all sorts of wooden 
 models of all sorts of ships and boats and forts ; two 
 sides of old Venetian galleys, carved in great figures, 
 and all gilt and red, — - they must have been gay things 
 afloat ; a mast of the old Bucentaur, and a picture of 
 it; and the model of it, eighty feet long, which the 
 Austrians carried off with them, the thieves I A great 
 torn and patched and faded shred of a flag which came 
 out of the battle of Lepanto ; a suit of armor made for 
 a little boy eight years old, the son of some Doge, who 
 wished to inure the poor baby to war, and kept him on 
 the walls in war time in this frightful suit of mail. It 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 223 
 
 was on a lay-figure of wood, and even the white round 
 wooden face looked scared, just as, no doubt, the poor 
 son of the Doge did ! 
 
 A patronizing officer went about with us, and said he 
 had been in Boston and Montreal, and that people had 
 to be very rich to live in America. Ah, we knew what 
 that meant, — that he expected a big fee ! But afterward 
 
 he asked 1ST if we had all been married ; so for his 
 
 impertinence we gave him only a franc, and he looked 
 quite taken down when we came away. 
 
 Wednesday we went over the Viceroy's yacht. At first 
 the Marshpee Indians — I mean Egyptians — did not 
 seem inclined to let us go on board ; but we coaxed and 
 wheedled them as well as we could at six arms' length, 
 rocking in a gondola under their stern, and at last we 
 prevailed. 
 
 Going to sea would not be a bad thing to do in the 
 
 Viceroy's yacht. Mrs. T said it was far handsomer 
 
 than the Queen's. Such a luxurious cabin you never 
 dreamed of, — satin damask of the most exquisite gray 
 color, with bright rosebuds and vines over it, on every 
 chair or sofa or cushion ; mosaics from Rome for ta- 
 bles ; inlaid work in woods and in silver on the walls ; 
 above every lamp a convoluted shell with mosaic and 
 mother-of-pearl in it to reflect the light ; — does n't it 
 sound comfortable? 
 
 They did not show us the bedroom, and we were 
 afraid to ask, for they crowded about us, and their black 
 eyes gleamed with something which did not impress us 
 as being the pure respectfulness to which we were ac- 
 customed ; and I, for one, felt a little happier when we 
 were fairly out of the ship. But we had seen Ismail 
 Pacha's cabin and all his men ; most of their clothes, 
 too, which looked like the shirts and trousers of any 
 other nation, and were all hung out to dry on long lines 
 forward. They were very busy getting ready to leave 
 "Venice the next day, as soon as the Viceroy should 
 return from Florence, and I dare say it did not please 
 them to be interrupted by five women's questions. 
 
2 2 4 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 In San Giorgio are some fine carvings in wood. 
 They were made by a Flemish somebody. There are 
 sixty seats or stalls for the priests in a semicircle ; the 
 backs and the arms and the railings in front, and every 
 available inch, all are cut into the most exquisite and 
 effective picturing. It is the life of St. Benedict which 
 is the theme of the largest panels, those making the 
 backs of the seats. It begins with the St. Benedict 
 baby and Mrs. Benedict in bed, and the nurse and the 
 doctor, and the rest of them giving the Benedict baby 
 its first bath ; and so on down through the saint's whole 
 career, about which I was ashamed to know nothing. 
 One dies daily of shame at one's own ignorance here. 
 But these lovely carvings are as fine and telling as 
 bronze ; some of the faces I shall remember always, and 
 the riotous foliage and ornament everywhere. The 
 Fleming must have lived long and put his best years 
 into this wood. 
 
 Thursday we saw the Viceroy and his whole suite 
 
 come down the Gr C in the royal gondolas, and 
 
 go on board the small tug to take them to their steamer. 
 Ismail Pacha looked like any Mr. Smith of America, 
 full brown beard and fat cheeks; the officers blazed 
 with uniform and orders ; the bands played, the singers 
 sang, and Venice looked on from the air with her old 
 palace front as strong and regal and unmoved as ever. 
 the queenhood of the face of this sinking city ! three 
 inches in a century it goes down, — did you know it ? — 
 so the end is sure ! 
 
 On Friday we went to Murano again, and saw the 
 colored and twisted and flowered glass and beads made, 
 
 and I had two tumblers made for little H and 
 
 A , and, like the smaller child I am myself, cracked 
 
 one on the voyage home, in my hurry to get it out of 
 the cooling seaweed it had been packed in, and smashed 
 the other on the stone stairs as I went up to bed ! 
 
 On Saturday we went to the Lido, looked at clover 
 and buttercups, and ragged-robin, and green fields, and 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 22 
 
 old Jewish graves overgrown with rank grass, and piled 
 up shells on the shore of the Adriatic. 
 
 Yesterday we went to a Scotch Presbyterian meet- 
 ing in a little room on the Grand Canal. Think of the 
 antithesis of the thing ! 
 
 10* o 
 
• 6 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Berchtesgaden, BavaeiA, Tuesday, July 6, 1869. 
 
 DEAK PEOPLE : This is what we do of an after- 
 noon, if the afternoon happen to be this one just 
 going. After dinner we saw from our front window a 
 priest bearing the crucifix, and little boys with candles 
 going into the church which is opposite ; in the morn- 
 ing P had seen a man and woman digging a grave 
 
 in the graveyard, which is also opposite our house. 
 (Don't think we dislike it ; on the contrary, it is the 
 cheerfullest place I ever saw. The crosses almost elbow 
 each other, they are so close ; they are gay with wreaths 
 and bunches »f flowers, and on every graze are grow- 
 ing forget-me-nots or roses or sweet-williams.) So we 
 thought there would be a funeral soon, and were on 
 the watch for it; but, just as it was in Venice, we were 
 a little too late. It must have happened while we were 
 at dinner, and when we got there, — now you will 
 never believe me, but it is true, — there was nobody left 
 in the graveyard but three old women and two little 
 children ; and two of the old women were sitting on a 
 grave knitting, while the third was filling up the grave 
 with a kind of hoe ; the two babies were leaning over 
 the edge and looking at each fall of the earth on the 
 boards ! We were so horrified that we walked imme- 
 diately away, and in our excitement sat down on one 
 of the praying benches with our backs to a huge cruci- 
 fix, and never observed what an irreverence we were 
 guilty of, until an old peasant woman came by, and, 
 with a stern look at us, knelt directly before us and 
 made the sign of the cross. We fled again, this time 
 out of the churchyard, and down a staircase path 
 which leads to the river, by way of much zigzag 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 227 
 
 through two or three people's grounds. This wonder- 
 ful little village is so up and down hill, that you are 
 always coming on bits of staircase, built in for a short 
 cut, where, without it, you would have to go miles 
 
 round. Pretty soon P found it too warm and 
 
 went home, but I kept on till I found a shady place 
 under an old stone wall, where I camped. It was on 
 the edge of a thoroughfare path from one part of the 
 river road to the top of the hill, so I had sight of every- 
 body who went on foot that way for an hour. An old 
 woman with a fishing-pole and trout in a pretty wooden 
 firkin; — I peeped at the trout and said "guten," and 
 pointed to the hotel where we stay, and she nodded 
 and said U J& " ; so I dare say we shall have these very 
 fish for supper. Then an old man on crutches, — how 
 he was ever to get up that steep climb I could not see, 
 nor for that matter how he could walk anywhere, 
 he was so old, and the crutches so poor; but the very 
 poorest, most tottering old people here bid you good 
 day with such a cheery, contented, good-fellowship, 
 voice, and smile, that you would not be afraid to change 
 places with the forlornest of them. Probably you 
 would be the gainer. I never saw such beautiful souls 
 shining through such hideous faces. Eeally the transi- 
 tion from the average wayside face of Italy to that 
 of G-ermany is a severe cold bath to one's artistic 
 sense, — such persistent and unconscious ugliness ! At 
 first I was vexed with them for not looking humili- 
 ated ; but presently I perceived that it was grand in 
 them not to discover that they were hideous, — a posi- 
 tive pre-apple innocence of all vanity. Already they 
 have grown beautiful to me, and their hearty recogni- 
 tion of every human soul they meet is the most divine 
 thing I have ever known a whole community to do. I 
 intend, all the rest of my life, to smile and say " Good 
 morning " to everybody I pass on the road; and be set 
 down for a mad woman ? Yes, I suppose so. I 
 did not mean in New York or London, though; I 
 
22 8 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 meant in the blessed country. I said " road," if you 
 observe. After a time " Barefoot " came by with a 
 great pail of strawberries on her arm tied up in a yel- 
 low silk handkerchief. I peeped into this too, and they 
 looked so ripe and red and dewy that I thought per- 
 haps for once they would taste like strawberries if I 
 bought them out of her hand and ate them on the 
 highway. For you must know that from the 1st of 
 last May till now I have been steadily eating straw- 
 berries, and not a strawberry of them all has had the 
 real strawberry flavor. They have a name to live and 
 are dead, — these " Alpine strawberries," which have 
 such a fine sound to the ear. I would give a bushel of 
 them for a saucer full from Bethlehem, New Hampshire, 
 any day. I held out a kreutzer to her with one hand, 
 and made signs that she should put the berries into the 
 other; she gave me a large handful, and wanted to 
 give me more, but there was no room. I ate them 
 slowly from the tip of a sharp grass blade, and dis- 
 covered that they were a little less lifeless without 
 sugar, which will be an economy for the landlord of 
 the Watzman; several of them rolled away in the 
 grass, and were at once pounced upon by mysterious 
 crawling people of many kinds, who fell to with a less v 
 fastidious appetite than mine. I burst out laughing all 
 alone by myself, to think how droll it was that there 
 should be such a difference between an ant and me, — I 
 eating the berries down by the handful, and he stretch- 
 ing his neck up to get a nibble off the great red moun- 
 tain ! Then I picked some purple thyme, and some vines 
 of yellow " money," which straggles all about the road- 
 sides here, and then I washed my hands in a little 
 brook which ran under the thyme and " money," and 
 then I went home and went into the dining-room and 
 turned the G-erman waiter's head by making signs that 
 I wanted two toothpick dishes. He kept tipping out 
 bunch after bunch of toothpicks and giving them to 
 me, and I kept putting down the toothpicks and 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 229 
 
 clutching at the dish, till I got into such a fit of laugh- 
 ter I was afraid he would never treat me respectfully 
 again. However, at last I triumphed and bore off two 
 of the dishes, leaving him looking at the toothpicks 
 scattered all over the tablecloth. On the stairs I met 
 our little " Special Providence," as I call him, — a fat 
 curly boy who speaks English, and I tolcl him I want- 
 ed the dishes to put flowers in, so I hope he explained 
 to the other. They are dear little oblong dishes of 
 glass, four or five inches long, and one and a half wide, 
 and I have had my eye on them, ever since I have been 
 here, for thyme and "money." Now one stands on my 
 right hand on my writing-table, and one on the centre- 
 table in P 's room ; and anything lovelier you could 
 
 not see than the pale purple and the bright yellow, and 
 the tangled sprays falling over as if they were still by 
 the roadside. 
 
 To-morrow I suppose I might as well tell you how 
 we got here, and what sort of a place it is, which it 
 would have been more business-like to do in the begin- 
 ning of my letter, only that one never does begin 
 where one ought, nor leave off where one should. But 
 you are going to be let off easy this time ! no such 
 thirty-six pages as the last ! Upon my word, such a 
 sight as I just saw from my window, — a man and a 
 woman coming up the road, the woman carrying a load 
 of wood in her arms, and the man carrying only an 
 umbrella ! And just as I was getting hot at the look 
 of it, do you think he did n't march up and give her the 
 umbrella too ! 
 
 Wednesday, July 8. — Really these people make 
 me cry. I have been rambling about the village this 
 morning, sitting down in shady nooks and reading 
 over a great delicious parcel of newspaper extracts 
 from America; and three different blessed old souls 
 stopped and spoke to me in such a way that I could 
 not keep the tears out of my eyes. First, the poor old 
 man on crutches ; I meet him everywhere. I don't see 
 
230 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TEA VELLER. 
 
 anybody with legs who walks so much. He thinks he 
 knows me now, and so he adds more and more cour- 
 tesy and benediction to his greeting every day. I do 
 believe he is inspired. I never saw such a radiant look 
 of content on any human face, yet he is very, very 
 thin. I do not believe he ever has enough to eat, and 
 his clothes are very poor. I would give a hundred 
 dollars (if I had it !) to be able to speak to him. I am 
 sure I cannot put into my simple bow and smile one 
 half the reverence I feel for him. Then, as I was sit- 
 ting on some stairs in the heart of a meadow hill, mid- 
 way between the church and the river, came by an 
 old woman with a rough wallet holding two loaves of 
 black bread and her shoes ! She stopped and nodded, 
 and nodded and smiled, and said " G-ood morning ! " 
 and then added, " It is good here," or, as they say still 
 more effectively, " Here is good." I said, " Yes, yes," and 
 smiled back again as hard as I could, but, dear me ! what 
 would I have given for a few words ! Then I struck 
 out of the path, and half ran and half rolled down the 
 other side of the hill, and came into a Brattleboro' path, 
 on the edge of a stony brook and set thick with pur- 
 ple vetch and tiny sunflowers, and white "snow- 
 flake " and " pride of the meadow," and half a dozen 
 more of our common field-flowers. I made a big 
 bunch of purple and yellow and white, and fringed it 
 with green grass and odd leaves, and then sat down 
 bare-headed under a tree, and plunged again into my 
 newspapers. John Weiss and Frothingham and Emer- 
 son ! how good their voices sounded under this sky ! I 
 was quite lost in listening to them, when a great, gruff 
 voice said, " Ja, ja, hier ist gut " (" here it is good "), 
 and there stood a Berchtesgaden carpenter, his foot- 
 rule sticking out of his pocket, and a bundle of boards 
 under his arm, looking with such genuine sympathy 
 at my flowers, at my hat hung on my umbrella, and 
 at me. I nodded and said as nearly as I could the 
 same words after him. Then he laughed a little at 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 231 
 
 my German, and lifted his hat, and kept it in his hand 
 till he had passed many steps beyond me. Think of 
 the air of such a place ! I positively begin to wonder 
 if they sin here! I suppose somebody must. But 
 none of these people who smile and look so serene and 
 say " Good morning " to me do ; I '11 go bail for them, 
 all of them. They seem to me just as true and beau- 
 tiful and harmonious as the trees and the butterflies ; 
 and as for going back from this atmosphere to that 
 of the rest of the world, " do not believe I can. I 
 shall stay here till somebody comes to carry me away. 
 I already feel as if never of my own free-will could I 
 turn my back on these hills. And how can I tell you 
 what they are like to the eye ? Like Brattleboro' and 
 Bethlehem married and come to spend honeymoon in 
 the Alps ! Now I have exhausted my fancy on that 
 figure, and how you will all laugh at it ! But it is 
 like Brattleboro'. There are soft-wooded hills that 
 lap and circle ; and there are paths everywhere by 
 little brooks, and roads everywhere by stony foam- 
 ing rivers ; and such pine woods as Brattleboro's will 
 be when they grow up. These are, well, forty or fifty 
 feet higher! Never did I think a fir could be so tall 
 and not snap. I am afraid, driving between them. 
 Then there are mountains, like Mt. Washington in its 
 best October days, purple or gray, with patches of 
 snow dazzling white ; and then there is the giant Watz- 
 man, the king of them all, and he has a glacier. Also 
 there are lakes, only one of which I have seen, and 
 that is so wonderfully beautiful that I cannot try to 
 tell you anything about it, but I shall put in some little 
 photograph pictures into this letter ; from them you 
 can build the air castles for yourselves, and put in the 
 mountains and the woods and the lakes and the 
 people. 
 
 The " G-uest House and Brewery " at which we are 
 staying looks much better in reality than in this very 
 bald little picture. It should have been taken so as to 
 
232 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 throw in the whole of the hill on the left, which has 
 pine-trees at top, and is one of my morning haunts. 
 It is quite as high as the hill behind, on the top of 
 which you will see a house gleaming out among the 
 trees. Now you can understand from these why we 
 go up and down stairs all over the village. It is not 
 six minutes' walk from the Watzman to that house on 
 the top of the hill, but more than half of the way is 
 up stairs. On a small clear plateau of this hill, over- 
 looking the whole village, and in full sight from every 
 part of it, is a large shrine in which is a fearful repre- 
 sentation of the Crucifixion. The Saviour and the 
 two thieves, figures of wood, and large as life ! We 
 have found these at every step of the way since we 
 entered Germany, of all sizes, colors, and degrees of 
 the horrible. At first I could not look at them, and felt 
 only a sense of repulsion and antagonism against the 
 religion which had put them there, but I have now 
 entirely changed my feeling about them. I believe 
 that much of the sweet beautiful recognition which the 
 people give to strangers and to each other has grown 
 out of the habitual reverence of their daily lives for 
 these images of Christ and the saints. The smallest 
 child, the coarsest man, uncovers his head in passing 
 one of these shrines. We are very bigoted and stupid, 
 it seems to me, in assuming that it is the thing which 
 the Roman Catholic reverences, when he kneels before 
 his poor tawdry saint, or kisses the feet of the silver 
 Christ. We who have pictures which we kiss daily 
 ought to be more just than that. 
 
 Opposite this hotel is a most picturesque old church 
 and graveyard; 0, 1 remember, I told you so! Well, 
 joining the church is a little shrine, with a group of 
 figures in it which I defy anybody to see without 
 laughing, they are so grotesque, so hideously absurd; 
 and yet I cannot now look out at them at night, 
 and see the little solitary beam of the lamp burning 
 before it, without a thrill. I think there will be some 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 233 
 
 hard moments in my life to come, when, if I think of 
 G-ethsemane, I shall think of this dreadful little shrine 
 in the Tyrol, and of the earnest, pleading, praying souls 
 I have seen kneeling before it. It is the night in G-eth- 
 semane; the Christ and all the Apostles have wreaths 
 of artificial roses on their heads. The positions of 
 two or three of the sleeping Apostles are so ludicrous 
 that I should not dare to describe them. Several little 
 fat angels, also with wreaths, are hung by wires from 
 the roof, and a big angel, worst of all, is directly in 
 front of the kneeling Christ, supporting him. Never in 
 the poorest country church have I seen anything so 
 frightfully grotesque, and yet I have seen men kneel 
 before that iron railing with that in their faces which 
 it smote me to the heart to see ; I should never have 
 done justice to what the Roman Catholic religion was 
 intended to be, if I had not come face to face with it in 
 these honest, earnest, solemn country people of South 
 Germany. In Italy it was no more the same thing than 
 if it did not bear the same name. I wonder daily if 
 this be not its very strongest hold, — I mean, on the 
 masses. 
 
 July 14. — Well, dear people, I could not put in, if 
 I tried, all that we have seen since I wrote these last 
 pages of rhapsody over country Catholicism. Such 
 a tumble as we have had, and such a scatter ! At first 
 I thought I would not try to tell you the story, it 
 would be so long; but it is too good to keep. To 
 begin back, we were told, before coming to Berchtes- 
 gaden, that the hotels here would not " keep " people, 
 that everybody had to go into lodgings ; but, being of 
 the self-asserting sort, we did not quite believe this, 
 it sounded so incredible. We thought we should get 
 kept, if nobody else did ; and as for going into apart- 
 ments to live, that was something we never would do, 
 not we I I was strongest of all on this point. Never 
 again, so long as I live, do I wish to see my dinner 
 coming into the door in a box on a man's head. Well, 
 
234 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 so we settled down in our comfortable rooms at the 
 Watzman, as I told you ; and are not the H. H. written 
 in the photograph over the very window of mine ? 
 And did not the good-natured chambermaid and porter 
 lug out the second bed to make a nice place for my 
 writing-table ? and did I not hang up my " Council of 
 Friends" on the walls, and Paul Veronese's little St. 
 John, and the dear convent of San Lazzaro, and set all 
 my sixteen books in their appointed places, and say 
 unto my soul, " Soul, thou hast six weeks before thee 
 in this room ; it is a good place to do good work in " ? 
 and that very night did not Franz tell us at tea that we 
 could only have the rooms a fortnight, he thought ; that 
 nobody ever stayed, everybody went into lodgings? 
 Still we thought we would let things slide, and trust to 
 sticking on somehow ; at least, I did. The best part of all 
 
 the fun is, that at this crisis, in these early days, P 
 
 and N were a little bored with Berchtesgaden and 
 
 intimated that they might not be contented here a month. 
 "Very well," said I, "you can go off to as many water- 
 ing-places as you please ; out of this heavenly spot I 
 do not stir for six weeks. I do not care if there be not 
 a human being here to whom I can speak." People 
 kept coming and going every day, — Germans, chiefly ; 
 now and then an English party. Nobody stayed over 
 two days or three ; the house filled and emptied, and 
 filled and emptied, like a railroad station. One day 
 we saw the landlord send away three carriage-loads of 
 people in one hour; no rooms for them! Then my 
 heart sank within me ! Still I said, "I will pay for that 
 second bed which has been taken out of my room ; 
 then I shall be as good as two." So I clung to hope. 
 
 Last Friday the blow fell. The poor Franz, with 
 great suffering in his face, told us that a party of court 
 ladies were to arrive from Ischl Saturday night, (the 
 Queen had already arrived at her villa with a large suite,) 
 and that every room in the house was required. " I 
 told you so, mees," he said. Yes, he had told us so, — 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 235 
 
 we had nobody to blame but ourselves. In midst of 
 my discomfiture, what triumph that my friends did 
 not, after all, wish to leave this quiet Berchtesgaden ! 
 Didn't we take an einspanner and drive to seven 
 different lodging-houses, one after the other, in vain? 
 No rooms in Berchtesgaden which would do for us. 
 This little town is absolutely brimful of people. At 
 last I found in the house next to the hotel, only a min- 
 ute's walk, two lovely rooms, which by some strange 
 chance had been left unrented, — a little bedroom, and 
 a corner sitting-room with four windows 1 Into these 
 I moved in two short hours, having all my " Council 
 of Friends," and my pictures, and my books, and my 
 tooth-powder, and my india-rubbers carried over in a 
 clothes-basket. And then I was magnanimous enough 
 
 not to laugh at P and N , who had absolutely no 
 
 resource left them but to drive back to Salzburg, to stay 
 there a week, before they could have rooms at Ischl, 
 where they had intended to go a little later ! It is only 
 fourteen miles off, to be sure, and it is a beautiful place ; 
 but it is a large city, and we had seen it thoroughly, 
 and last, not least, it cost us fifteen francs a day at the 
 hotel there, and to go back there and stay seven days 
 would have been the very thing of all others which we 
 should have said nothing would induce us to do. At 
 first I felt a little nervous about being left all alone in 
 this little G-erman town, one word of whose language I 
 cannot speak. But I wanted to stay so much that I 
 decided to try it, knowing that I could join the girls at 
 any minute if I found it too lonely; thus far I enjoy it 
 immensely, and think now I shall stay two weeks, 
 while they take a look at the gayeties of Ischl, for which 
 I do not hanker. I have my breakfast and tea in the 
 house, and go over to the hotel for my dinner ; and 
 Franz, the little curly-headed " Special Providence " who 
 speaks English, begs to be allowed to come over and 
 translate for me, — u if there might be anything what 
 you will like to say, mees," he tells me every day; so 
 
236 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 I am writing away at things I had wanted to do, and 
 taking long walks, and reading Morris and Emerson, 
 and having the novel experience of being, for the first 
 time in my life, absolutely and entirely alone. It will 
 only be so for a few days, however, for next week I 
 expect friends from "Venice, and probably some from 
 Eome. In fact, it is partly because I do not want 
 to miss seeing them that I stay on. Meantime I see 
 more and more the reason of the landlord's not keeping 
 permanent people in his house. Carriage-load after 
 carriage-load they come from both ways, for a day, 
 a night, a dinner. In August, Franz says the gen- 
 tlemen sleep in the barn often, or camp on the hill, 
 and he has four beds in my room ! And I, poor sim- 
 pleton, thought perhaps I might bribe him by paying 
 for two ! In the parlor and bedroom opposite mine, in 
 this house, is a German lady who looks so like Mrs. 
 Dall I am sure she belongs to the same class of work- 
 ers; she has a writing-table, too, all covered with 
 papers and work just like mine. I have caught her 
 " peeking " through at mine, just as I do at hers ; I pre- 
 sume we wonder equally at each other. She has two 
 sons, — fine, tall fellows, students, I think, — who come 
 to see her every day, and they go off for tramps to- 
 gether. JSTow you see the mistake of my life in not 
 having had the gift of tongues. If I could only speak 
 G-erman, all sorts of things would happen. Among 
 others, I should be able to get out of the director of the 
 Salt Works, who lives in such a lovely stone house 
 joining the old church opposite, all necessary informa- 
 tion to make a wonderful story about the Bavarian 
 salt. It is the most marvellous thing you ever heard 
 of, — the way they carry this salt-water about in pipes 
 from town to town, over mountains two thousand 
 feet high ; sixty miles it goes on one route, — from 
 Berchtesgaden through Reichenhall to Transtein. The 
 other day in Reichenhall, 1 saw, in a great dripping 
 chamber, two wheels, forty feet high, rolling slowly 
 
/ 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 237 
 
 round and round, dipping down into water under the 
 floor, and working all sorts of mysterious pistons and 
 things, and -that is all I know about it; but I shall go 
 
 into the salt-mine after the Gr s come. That will 
 
 be one thing I can see without speaking German. 
 But now I must tell you a little about the pictures of 
 the wonderful lake Koenigsee, so that you can under- 
 stand them. Look first at picture No. 1 ; that is the 
 end of the lake to which we drive from Berchtesgaden 
 (three miles) ; those little houses are boat-houses, 
 from which you push out in a ticklish little boat, rowed 
 perhaps by two women, — there are as many women 
 as men who row. You row down between those two 
 points in the centre of the picture, and turn round the 
 one on the right, and there you see the view which is 
 given in No. 2. But you can hardly form any idea of 
 the immense distance, except when I tell you that the 
 little chapel of St. Bartholema, which is shown in No. 
 3, is the tiny white spot which you see apparently 
 near the end of the lake in No. 2. The mountains are 
 all five and six thousand feet high, and there is hardly 
 a spot on the lake where even a foothold could be 
 got on the shore, these mountains rise so sharply from 
 the water. When the king comes to hunt, the peas- 
 ants drive the chamois down these steep sides into 
 the water, and the royal people shoot them from boats. 
 If I am here when it happens I must see it, and yet 
 I shall want to shoot one shot for the chamois into 
 midst of the court. the cruel thing that it is to do ! 
 The picture of Berchtesgaden does not give you a 
 good idea of anything except the big Watzman, with 
 its glacier ; you see only part of the town, and get no 
 idea of the lovely sloping hills which lie all about it, 
 with houses and farms set like white and green stones 
 in the framing of dark fir forests. The little villa is a 
 capital picture of the average style of country-seat in 
 this neighborhood. Almost all have as many vines as 
 this one, and they all have the projecting roofs and 
 
2 3 S ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 stones laid along the narrow cross-boards to hold them 
 down. I meant to have sent a picture of the royal 
 villa, but forgot it. That has a solid wall of woodbine 
 over the lower story, and is very picturesque. But my 
 letter is heavy enough now. 
 
 I don't tell you anything about Salzburg, nor about 
 Innspruck, nor about the Grand Ampezzo Pass through 
 which we came up from Venice here. It was a fine 
 two weeks' journey, — better even than the Cornice 
 road, about which you never heard, for the luckless 
 letter went nobody knows where. 0, I must tell you 
 that your next letter will be from Innspruck, from the 
 Schloss Wyerburg, an old hunting castle of the old 
 Maximilians ! Does not that sound well ? Some pleas- 
 ant English people, friends of the S s, are board- 
 ing there, and are anxious to have us join them ; so that 
 is likely to be our next move ; and from Innspruck 
 there are many pleasant excursions, — it is nearly the 
 centre of the Tyrol. I feel as if I had told you noth- 
 ing in this letter. There is a wedding dance I have 
 seen, and a ride all by myself in an eilwayen (omni- 
 bus), and a trial of a fire apparatus here in the streets 
 of Berchtesgaden, and a trip to Eeichenhall, and a din- 
 ner in a garden. Why cannot one write as fast as one 
 could speak ? 
 
 Good by ; love, and love, and love to you all. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 239 
 
 Wild-Bad-Gastein, Austma., August 11, 1869. 
 
 DEAR PEOPLE : I had half a mind to send you this 
 month a treatise on European cookery, or politics, 
 or anything else rather than where I am, and how I came 
 so. It looks like such a tangle of a story to tell. But 
 I suppose if I said I was not here, but somewhere else, 
 somebody would be sure to turn up and contradict me. 
 T always got found out in all the lies I ever told, and a 
 good many I did n't. I dare say half of this story will 
 be taken to be fiction. 
 
 The last you heard of me was at Berchtesgaden, Ba- 
 varia, leading the life of a hermit, and feasting on moun- 
 tains. I think I wrote you all about the general stam- 
 pede of strangers there, and the utter impossibility of 
 getting rooms in the hotels. How little I thought that 
 in less than two weeks I should see a place by compari- 
 son with which Berchtesgaden is a roomy solitude ! But 
 dear me ! I am giving you hints ; that spoils all. The 
 last week of my stay in Berchtesgaden, however, I must 
 not forget to mention. I led anything but a hermit's 
 life, having no less than twelve friends and acquaint- 
 ances in the town, so that I was sorrier than ever at the 
 prospect of coming away. But the girls wrote from 
 Ischl, entreating me to join them at Salzburg, and 
 take a run down to this Bad - G-astein before we 
 went to Innspruck. G-astein I had longed to see, so I 
 packed up in an hour and posted over to Salzburg; 
 and for G-astein we started on Monday morning, August 
 2, — a capital pair of horses, an easy carriage, and a 
 respectable old body for driver, who had been in the 
 service of the Goldener SchifiP ( the hotel from which we 
 set off) for twenty years. How gay we were ! The 
 
240 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 girls had so much to tell of their doings at Ischl, 
 where they had been driven from pillar to post, in 
 matter of rooms, just as they were at Berchtesgaden, 
 but where they had managed, in a sort of Israelite 
 fashion, to have a grand time ; had seen the Empress of 
 Austria and her papa and mamma, and the wonderful 
 little town of Hallstadt, which clings like swallows' 
 nests to the mountain-side, and never sees sun above 
 the mountain-tops from November 17 to February 2. 
 Think of that! I had nothing to give them in return 
 for these traveller's tales except faint, shadowy sketches 
 
 of the conversation of the Baroness von M , who 
 
 had spent several mornings in Berchtesgaden in telling 
 me about the life at court ; the experiences of her sis- 
 ter-in-law who is Maid of Honor to Queen Somebody, — 
 I forget now who, — and the ways and manners of Ger- 
 man people generally. The little Baroness is an Ameri- 
 can, but has married an officer in the Prussian army, 
 and lived seven years in Germany. Her head is a lit- 
 tle the less steady for having so many relatives at court ; 
 but she is very amusing, and has quite a fund of Ameri- 
 can good sense left in her yet. Fancy the poor Maid 
 of Honor having to sleep all alone in a small pavilion, 
 some little distance from an insignificant and incon- 
 venient villa which the Queen had seen fit to buy of a 
 tailor, and live in for the summer, though it was far too 
 small to accommodate her suite. At night the Queen 
 says, " I will go at seven in the morning to take a walk." 
 So by seven in the morning poor Maid of Honor must 
 be at the door of the Queen's bedchamber, dressed, 
 ready for the walk. No queen ! Hour after hour passes. 
 Maid of Honor can't stir, because at any moment 
 Queen may come. Perhaps at eleven Queen comes 
 out and says, il 0, it is too late now, but we will take 
 a drive ! " Off goes poor breakfastless Maid of Honor 
 to drive for two hours ! And so it is all day ; and then 
 perhaps at midnight the Queen takes a walk. It sounds 
 so real when it is the Maid of Honor's sister-in-law who 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 241 
 
 tells you. I never had any idea of it all before. Madame 
 d' Arblay's Memoirs sounded as mythical to me as the 
 labors of Hercules. : — Well, with our queens and our 
 empresses, and our maids of honor, we rolled along over 
 such a lovely road that I could tell you nothing, if I tried 
 which would make you see how it looks. The great Salz- 
 burg plain is the most beautiful I ever saw. Hadley 
 meadow, perhaps, enclosed in an amphitheatre of moun- 
 tains eight and ten thousand feet high, with a city in 
 the middle of the plain, and a great gray turreted cas- 
 tle perched upon a crag in the middle of the city. It is 
 all highly cultivated, — the plain, — wheat and flax and 
 grass ; avenues of linden-trees cross it here and there. 
 The flax was blue as the sky, the wheat was yellow, 
 and much of it stacked in the queer fashion they have 
 here, which is to build the stack up of tied bunches, 
 "criss cross" round a pole; three bunches at bottom 
 stick down in the ground like legs, and every stack 
 looks like a grotesque Esquimau. A field full of them 
 in rows and squads is as funny as Beard's bears. 
 
 At ten we reached Hallein, — a dingy, close-built little 
 town, which looked like an Italian town baked over. 
 Here we stayed four hours, and went through a salt-mine. 
 Can't write that up now ; only I will mention that we 
 went in at top or near the top of a mountain twelve 
 hundred feet high, and we came out at bottom of 
 the mountain. Yes, honor bright, we did, and I shall 
 send you the pictures of it in this letter, to show you 
 how we looked. They are very good pictures. Some 
 of the slides down which we went, squatted on poles 
 and astride the track, exactly as you will see in the 
 pictures, were hundreds of feet long, and just as steep 
 as they look , the first one almost took our breath away 
 with terror, but after that we did not mind it. The 
 most wonderful thing was the pull across that black 
 lake, lit by shimmering lamps all round the outer 
 edge, and the rock roof close over our heads, and we 
 towed slowly over by invisible hands on the farther 
 W p 
 
242 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 shore. It reminded me of the Car of Padalon in the 
 Curse of Kehama. 
 
 The Bloomer dresses we_had to put on are made of stout 
 white twilled cotton. They also give you round wool- 
 len caps; but those we declined for many reasons, and 
 wore our own hats. Coming down from the mine into 
 the town, I was so tired that I stopped a man whom I 
 took to be a post driver by his top-boots and yellow 
 trousers, and asked him to take me to the inn. I mean 
 
 that 1ST asked him, I seconding the appeal by the 
 
 mute language to which I am confined in this country. I 
 thought he looked uncommonly astounded at the re- 
 quest; and awful misgivings crept over me, inch by inch 
 of the way, as I looked at his heavy costly gloves and 
 whip, and the superior make and get up of his horses. 
 " Of course," I said to myself, "here I have been and 
 gone and jumped into the wagon of a baron or an 
 archduke or something, and I can't even say, ' I am 
 quite sorry, sir, but really your face is so red I took 
 you for a postilion.' But he was only the Herr — some- 
 thing or other which I can't spell, — and he only had to 
 carry me a few rods ; we were not so far off as I 
 thought ; and I dare say he is very glad of the story to 
 tell, to illustrate the manners of American women, and 
 how they don't know better than to offer a gentleman 
 money. 
 
 We ate a good dinner of trout in the queer little 
 stuffy dining-room of the inn, with dishes set up behind 
 slats on the wall ; and I came away and forgot my 
 lovely bouquet of edelweiss and cyclamen, my fare- 
 well gift from the head-waiter at the Watzman in 
 Berchtesgaden. Always at these G-erman inns they 
 give you, when you go away, a bouquet of flowers ; 
 sometimes you will see a carriage full of people driv- 
 ing off with four or five beautiful bunches of flowers. 
 When we left the house of the G-olden Star, kept by 
 the five sisters Barbaria, in the Ampezzo Pass, at Cor- 
 tina, they gave us each a bunch of the most superb 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER 243 
 
 great geranium blossoms and roses, all cut from the 
 plants in their dining-room. How they could have had 
 the heart to cut off so many, I don't know ; though, to be 
 sure, the windows looked just as full of flowers when 
 we drove off as when we arrived. 
 
 At four o'clock, Golling. Pouring rain! 0, how 
 we chafed and fretted, for at Golling is the waterfall ! 
 " Scharzback, one of the finest in the German Alps," 
 said Murray, and supposed to be outlet of our dear 
 Kcenigsee at Berchtesgaden, and this we meant to see 
 before dark. Could we drive to it ? "0 yes." So I said 
 resolutely, " I shall take an einspanner and go." The 
 girls went to bed, and I and my little dwarf man of a 
 driver started off. The rain delusively held up for 
 me to start ; once down in the meadow, then it had 
 me, and began to flood the very road. Poor Dwarf 
 shifted his seat from puddle to puddle 01: the seat ; 
 now and then he looked back imploringly at me ; but 
 I was snugged up under the boot as dry as a chip, 
 and they had told him that the dame could not speak a 
 word of German ; so what could he do? Then it began 
 to thunder and lighten ; and the horse plunged, which 
 is n't a nice thing in an einspanner. (0, I have never 
 yet told you about an einspanner, I will.) At last the 
 man drew up in front of a little house, or room rather, 
 for beer drinking, and made signs to me that I should 
 jump out ; so I did, and there I waited till the worst 
 went by. A good-natured German woman came in, 
 hoping to sell me beer, and we talked about the 
 weather ; with my eyes and hands I talked, and a few 
 ejaculatory substantives, and then I made a pun in Ger- 
 man, which tickled her and the driver so that they 
 roared. I said (never mind the German), " I wish see 
 waterfall, much waterfall ! " pointing to the sky. 
 Waterfall in German is " wasser fall " ; that 's how J 
 happened to know it, it is so like the English. Then 
 they both began to talk German to me in torrents ; 
 and 1 was glad to escape into the carriage. The man 
 
2 44 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 led the horse up a gully road for quarter of a mile, and 
 then stopped and said I was to walk the rest of the 
 
 way 
 
 Monday, August 16. — This letter is sure to be the 
 worst I ever sent you, dear souls. It is a kind of wash- 
 ing-day-dinner letter. You '11 eat it because you can't 
 get any other, and you won't be as hungry as if you 
 had eaten nothing ; but don't we all hate Monday din- 
 ners ? Now you see there is nothing left of that water- 
 fall, for since August 11, when I began this letter, 
 I 've cooked it for a newspaper ! It fitted and slipped 
 in so naturally into a letter I was writing J could not 
 resist the temptation to serve it hot a la carte to those 
 customers, and this is all you '11 get of it, unless you 
 look up the waiter who carried it off. But nobody 
 else but you will be told how funny it all was when we 
 did really reach G-astein. It was at noon of Wednes- 
 day. We began to grow nervous as we drew near the 
 town, because we had had no answer to our telegram 
 for rooms ; and the minute we drove into the little Platz 
 before the Straubinger Hotel we had an instinct that 
 there was a clear case for Mr. Malthus in this town. A 
 pompous fellow in a white waistcoat met us. Yes, he 
 had received our telegram. Sorry he could not give us 
 rooms in the house. He had taken them for us in the 
 Schloss, the great stone house opposite. So we drove up 
 the side of a house, — f mean hill, but it was as steep, 
 — and faced the proprietor there. Big man, big hall, big 
 blackboard with numbers of the rooms in the house, 
 and the occupants' names written in chalk on it ! Yes, 
 the landlord of Straubinger had taken a room for us ; 
 this was it. " No. 16, Lord Cavendish " ! Now if any- 
 thing in this world could be plain, one would think it 
 might be the fact that th«-ee American women were 
 not " Lord Cavendish " ; but for half an hour poor N- 
 
 and the landlord bowed and jabbered to each other in 
 vajn to clear up this point. Back we drove to the 
 hotel again. Yes, that was our room. Lord Caven- 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 345 
 
 dish ^ould n ot arrive till Saturday. We timidly said 
 that we had telegraphed for three rooms, and that 
 however double or triple Lord Cavendish might be, and 
 yet be satisfied with one room, we wanted three. At 
 
 last we got one more, a flight higher up ; P and I 
 
 took the noble lord's apartment, and N went up 
 
 stairs. A very fine room ours was ; four windows, two 
 beds, and wardrobes and tables and secretaries in 
 quantity. But such a noise ! It was over the water- 
 fall. A waterfall three hundred feet high, in the very 
 centre of the town, is the most picturesque thing I ever 
 saw ; but the effect of it on the human ear is some- 
 thing not to be endured. You feel as if you had just 
 got into New York in twenty steamboats, and they 
 were all letting off steam at once under your stateroom 
 window. "Well, Lord Cavendish," said we, "you are 
 welcome to your room on Saturday morning. English 
 nerves may stand this racket better than American." 
 
 In the night P and I called out to each other, 
 
 " Are you awake ? don't you think it gets louder every 
 minute ? " We felt as if we were part of it, at last, 
 and going down head-foremost over rocks. Breakfast 
 and tea in our room, not bad ; dinner over at the Hotel 
 Straubingers at one o'clock for a florin, at three o'clock 
 for two florins ; being bent on economy, we went 
 at one. Babel let loose ! Why people talk about 
 American tables dliote I can't imagine ; we don't make 
 half so much noise, nor make knives fly in and out 
 of throats, nor do some other things which Germans 
 do, but which I could not even bring myself to write. 
 We are much more civilized than I supposed we were 
 in comparison with the peoples I have seen thus far. 
 Not a window open ; a G-erman would think he was 
 sure to die, with an open window at his back. One 
 hundred people in a room which ought to hold only 
 fifty. A narrow plank-wide table in the middle, and 
 one a little broader all round the room. Hungarian to 
 right of you, Russian in front, French and G-erman to 
 
2 46 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 left, and English silence just beyond. Waiters bring- 
 ing, first, soup, with watery bread in it; roast beef ? 
 done black, and swimming in gravy, and cucumbers 
 served with it ; junks of fat bacon, and an indescriba- 
 ble bean-mush served with that ; roast veal, and stewed 
 plums to eat with that ; and then fried griddle-cakes, 
 chopped up and spooned out for dessert. That is the 
 wholesome and nourishing dinner you get at Strau- 
 binger's for one florin. There are other hotels here, 
 worse At three o'clock, for two florins you get 
 several more courses, and a good deal of fol-de-rol for 
 dessert ; but it is all of a piece, and you may as well 
 save your extra florin, and spend it for fruit at the 
 peasant woman's stand opposite the hotel. We cruised 
 about town ; smelt and tasted of all the hot springs and 
 cold, poked into the cavern where some of them are 
 dripping, got drenched with the waterfall, looked at 
 all the booths and things to sell and went to bed, hav- 
 ing engaged our driver to take us back to Salzburg on 
 Saturday morning. On Friday afternoon I was attacked 
 with a sore-throat. Saturday morning, no better. 
 Lord Cavendish impending. G-ustav, the kind and 
 pompous head-man at Straubinger's, in despair. I bum- 
 die up, and go over to small room in his hotel ; girls in 
 another. Sunday morning, no better. Driver behaved 
 like a villain, refused to release us from our bargain, 
 and insisted on being paid ten dollars a day while he 
 waited. Of course I could not get better in such a 
 state of things ; five English people coming to take 
 these rooms on Monday morning. Never, I think, in 
 all my life did it appear to me so inconvenient and 
 perplexing a thing that I should exist as for a few 
 hours that Sunday morning. At last I made a coup 
 d'etat. I conspired with the good angel of a doctor ; 
 engaged a room in the priest's house, a few doors from 
 the hotel, and then told the girls I should stay two 
 weeks and they must go. I knew, as far as one can 
 know anything, that I should be entirely well in two 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 247 
 
 or three clays. I wanted to see more of G-astein, and 
 I promised to telegraph to them instantly if I were not 
 so well. The doctor speaks English perfectly. I knew 
 that friends from New Haven were coming in a day or 
 two, and I was sure I should never get well so long as 
 I felt that I was keeping my friends here, and we were 
 paying ten dollars a day for the rascally driver. It 
 was hard to make them go, but I succeeded ; and in less 
 than twenty-four hours after they left I was quite 
 well ; the third day I walked all over town. I hurry 
 to this consummation of the story, because I know just 
 with what dismay you will have been reading the last 
 page. Now I will go back and give the picture of the 
 days a little touching up. Sunday afternoon I moved 
 down to the priest's house, — one of the nicest in town, 
 and crowded full of lodgers ; only just this one de- 
 lightful front room vacated for me the day before, and 
 to be vacant just three days, and' no more, — just the 
 length of time which must pass before the dear doctor 
 could give me a room in his own house. All things 
 seemed to work so singularly that I began to feel 
 as resigned as a log, waiting to see into what corner I 
 should drift next. The girls came down and took tea 
 with me in my new quarters, and I was all unpacked 
 and in ord^r in an hour. At nine o'clock a tap at my 
 door, and there stood the sweetest-faced, saddest- 
 faced girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, 
 but hopelessly dwarfed and deformed. " I heard that 
 you were English and did not speak German, and I 
 came to see if there were anything I could say for you 
 to the maid before bedtime," said she, in the gentlest, 
 but most pathetic voice I ever heard. Do you suppose 
 you can any of you have an idea how I felt at that 
 moment? I did not know till then that I had had 
 a shade of misgiving about being alone ; but by the 
 warm rush into my cheeks and eyes at sight of her I 
 found out that I had. I think I shall never see any 
 face which will look to me so beautiful as does the 
 
M 8 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 face of that poor dwarf girl ; but it is not beautiful at 
 all. The next morning she came and sat with me for 
 a long time, and I have seen her every day since. 
 She is a Hungarian Her father is the president of the 
 highest tribunal at Pesth, and he is here for his health. 
 Her mother is one of the most glorious specimens of 
 what a woman can be at forty -five I have ever seen. 
 Think of her walking last week up the G-amskogel and 
 back, — nine hours of hard and even perilous climbing ; 
 and she laughed when I asked her if she were not 
 tired. They urged me to join the party and go on 
 horseback, — several members of it (all Hungarian) 
 speaking English well, she said, — but I dared not try it 
 even on a horse. How can one keep that tenth com- 
 mandment in presence of such strength as this ! Legs 
 and languages ! Let nobody expect to be happy in 
 Europe without two very strong specimens of the one, 
 and at least four of the other. I could not tell you if I 
 tried how kind and lovable and bright these people 
 are. I have always heard that the Hungarian nature 
 was a rarely fine and sensitive one, and since I have 
 known this mother and daughter I can easily believe it. 
 There is a subtle something in their atmosphere I never 
 before found, and cannot put into words; a fine 
 aroma of soul all the while making beautiful the small- 
 est word or gesture. The radiant tenderness with 
 which the mother looks every moment at the daughter 
 whose life is so blighted, and the brave gayety and love 
 with which Jozsa looks back. I forget to speak some- 
 times, watching the marvel of it. Jozsa has studied 
 English but six months, and she speaks well and under- 
 stands all I say. This puts me to such shame when I 
 think of my six months in Italy, and that to-day I 
 could not do more in Italian than perhaps to order a 
 dinner or dispute with a cochiere. Well, there were 
 three days at the priest's house ; dainty breakfasts and 
 teas served by the most ruffled and linen-clad of house y 
 keepers ; horrible dinners sent down in layers of stone' 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 249 
 
 china from Straubinger's ; long talks with Jozsa, and 
 sametimes four or five calls a day from the kindly 
 doctor, who, having only sixty patients to see each day, 
 is so running over with benevolence and good-will that 
 he is constantly doing odd jobs of helping for every- 
 body he can find in need of him. "Is there anything 
 I can order for you ? " he would cry out almost before 
 opening the door, and down stairs again before I had 
 half said, "No, thank you." Then it would be a book, 
 then a newspaper, and then my letters and papers, for 
 they took to coming, too, just at this crisis in my affairs. 
 Ah ! you need n't suppose those three days in the 
 house of the Gastein cure were dreary. I spent half 
 the time lying on the sofa, and looking out over the 
 waterfall at the mountain wall to the west ; green to 
 the very top, and so high, the sky seems resting on it 
 like a ceiling. I ought to have written, but I did not, 
 and that is the reason your letter is late. 
 
 On Thursday I moved again, — the fourth lodging in 
 a week, — up to the house of the good doctor. He was 
 much concerned, because in the priest's house I had been 
 somewhat sumptuously bestowed (for Gastein and his 
 simplicity), and in his house I was to come to an attic 
 chamber and plainer furnishings, and he did not know 
 me well enough to be sure I would not miss the gilt 
 curtain-fixtures and the big looking-glass. I could see 
 some distress in his face as he ran up stairs before me, 
 carrying a lovely little rosebush in his hand, which he 
 set on my window-sill. Ah, if I had not been satisfied ! 
 An attic room, to be sure, and only a bed and bureau 
 and washstancl and lounge, and two tables in it : but 
 from each window such mountains to be seen as I have 
 never yet looked on. This Gastein is almost at end of 
 roads ! You can drive four miles farther to Bockstein, 
 and there the mountains close in like an army of giants, 
 and there is no more going that way, except on horse- 
 back or on foot, through dangerous and difficult passes. 
 Four of these mountains I see from my windows ; from 
 11* 
 
250 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 my writing-table I look down on the whole town ; for 
 I forgot to tell you that the house is high up above 
 everything, a quarter of the way up the west wall of 
 the G-astein valley. It only takes me ten minutes to 
 walk down to Straubinger's ; but it is ail the way like 
 going down stairs. 
 
 Then came Marie the housekeeper, and kissed my 
 hand ; and she, too, brought a rose with her, and a few 
 forget-me-nots. Then I hung six of you, dear people, 
 up over my writing-table, and sat down, and that was 
 the beginning of my fourth era of G-astein ! Since then 
 I have had more perturbations of another kind, which I 
 cannot tell in a letter, they being too long and stupid ; 
 having relation only to telegraph messages and missing 
 relatives. In short, the story is : letter on Saturday 
 night from my dear sister, in Salzburg, giving no ad- 
 dress of hotel ! all Sunday spent in vain attempts to 
 telegraph to her there ; finally I am rewarded by the 
 
 information that Madame H had been there, but 
 
 gone, and left her trunk at the Bankers Trauner. 
 This is the advantage of being of one family ! I being 
 
 the Madame H who had left a trunk in charge of 
 
 the Bankers Trauner ; and my sister being all the while 
 sitting quiet and unhappy in the Hotel Nelboeck, quite 
 unaware that she never dated her letter. At last, late 
 at night, I get track of her through Dr. Prodi's brother, 
 who lives in Salzburg, and to whom the doctor had tele- 
 graphed to go to all hotels in the city and look her up. 
 But I am not much happier than before ; the message 
 is, " We leave for Munich to-morrow morning." Such 
 are the contingencies and vicissitudes, my dear people, 
 of being " round loose " in this part of the world. 
 How would you like it ? To see your dearest friends 
 whisked off in that way from under your nose and eyes 
 is a test of one's patience. If my sister had dated her 
 letter I should have taken post-horses and dashed down 
 to Salzburg to see her ; but as the postmark of the 
 letter was the oi?ly proof I had of her being there, I 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. ^ T 
 
 had not quite courage to go on the venture, not being 
 yet able to speak more than two thousand words of 
 German. 
 
 Tuesday Eve, August 17. — Who ever thought I 
 should live to do what I have been doing to-night, and 
 who ever could guess what it is? Lighting candles in 
 honor of the Emperor of Austria's birthday ! Ah, my 
 people, if you could but have seen the little town an 
 hour ago, and the Villa Proell, — for that is what we on 
 this height are called. Every house in town was gayly 
 lit from roof to cellar, and rockets going up among the 
 fir-trees, and I patting about the village with the doc- 
 tor looking at it all. We were very proud of our 
 house, which was by far the gayest, having lights on 
 the balconies behind the lattice-work, and at every 
 window, and having the Austrian flag at one corner 
 and the Hungarian at the other. J lit the candles on 
 the upper balcony and at my windows with my own 
 hands, just to say that I did it, not out of any love 
 for the Emperor. But the waterfall was the wonder 
 of the night ; it is one of the sights I shall never for- 
 get, — lit at bottom by a fiery red light and at top by a 
 brilliant blue. Can you try to fancy how a foaming 
 cascade three hundred feet high would look, lit with 
 blue and red, the foam sparkling off like stars of a 
 rocket, and the fir-trees standing out in the glow, as if 
 they were drawn with a fiery pencil on the sky? 
 Then the moon came up from behind one of the moun- 
 tains and gave an atmosphere of peace to the whole. 
 Very thrifty are the good German people, though, with 
 all their patriotism ; they are beginning already to blow 
 out the candles, and it is not nine o'clock ; here comes 
 the servant past my window blowing out ours. T do 
 not think more than three inches of the candles have 
 been burnt up. 
 
 Now I shall give you an exact list of the things 
 which are suspended on the front of this house. You 
 will not believe me, but it will be true. Nobody 
 
252 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 could believe, till they saw it, the childlikeness of these 
 Germans. From first balcony, a yellow fuzzy hearth- 
 rug j on top of it a flower-pot with gay paper round it 
 and an imitation lemon-tree in it. From second bal- 
 cony, a blue and white tablecloth; pinned in cen- 
 tre of the tablecloth something cut out of colored 
 paper, which I take to be a coat of arms ; above table- 
 cloth, a white sheet on a frame, with F. J. in large 
 gilt-paper letters ; above these, on the white sheet, two 
 worsted mats, one crimson and one green (a pres- 
 ent to the doctor from an English lady yesterday, for 
 his birthday is also to-day). These have a very strik- 
 ing effect as an outdoor decoration. On the third 
 balcony, a black and yellow tablecloth, the Austrian 
 flag in one corner, with a green bough at end of it and 
 the Hungarian flag in the other corner. Now, do you 
 believe me ? Because if you don't X will tell you some- 
 thing droller still. Last night the doctor and his 
 brother, and brother's wife, and Baroness Strauss, who 
 are visiting him, had a small festivity in honor of his 
 birthday, and this morning he sent up to my room two 
 of the adornments of his office on the occasion. One 
 was a wreath of purple thistles, and the other was 
 a large oval of white paper wreathed with oats, plan- 
 tain-leaves, may -weed, and grass, with two small car- 
 rots, tops and all, at bottom. Ophelia herself could not 
 have tied up anything crazier. In the centre of this a 
 shockingly bad photograph of the doctor, and around 
 it written, " This likeness is considered beautiful, Don 
 Juan." Now, if you do not believe this, I cannot 
 tell you anything more. I for my part, am heartily 
 in love with their simple-heartedness, and I feel so 
 ashamed of myself to have outgrown thistle-wreaths 
 and carrots and tablecloths. It is a new experience 
 for me to see people pleased with even smaller things 
 than please me. 
 
 Wednesday, August 18. — Eeally now, dear souls, 
 the letter must go. I know it is a patchwork, and 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 25,5 
 
 I am afraid to look at the seams. I am at end of 
 my paper too, and have cribbed these last sheets from 
 Dr. Prodi's office. I ought to tell you more about 
 him, but it would be a tale by itself. I have just come 
 from dinner, and he has given me a little German 
 verse which his brother wrote, as part of the birthday 
 sport ; his brother is the first advocate in Linz, and as 
 clever in his profession as Dr. Gustave in his. 
 
 "If in high heaven happy saints had need 
 Of some good, wise* and faithful soul 
 For doctor, God would surely send with speed 
 
 For this dear man, Gustavus Proell. 
 But since in heaven haste is not allowed, 
 
 And since to blessed sweet Gastein 
 The sick of nations come in yearly crowd, 
 God leaves him here. But if Divine 
 Compassion could but see how o'er the roads he springs, 
 He quickly would provide him with a pair of wings." 
 
 What do you think of my progress in German, my first 
 effort at translation ? For a six weeks' scholar is it 
 not good, considering that my only teachers have been 
 waiters, chambermaids, and landlords ? How stupid to 
 waste room on such nonsense ! Of course I only trans- 
 lated it by having it read to me. Now do you have 
 an idea of how I am getting naturalized here ? I should 
 take root in Germany much more easily than in Italy, 
 with all its beauty. This morning I have been with 
 
 Miss S to hear the grand mass for the Emperor, in 
 
 the little stone chapel of St. Nicolai, which you will see 
 in the picture. There were two grand dignitaries there 
 with the Order of the Golden Fleece. If I had only 
 known it beforehand I would have looked harder at 
 them ; but as it was, I looked at a poor peasant woman 
 who knelt on the stone floor by their side from begin- 
 ning to end of the mass. Afterwards we drove up to- 
 wards the Kotschackthal, which you will also see. It 
 is a delight to send you these pictures. I wonder I 
 never thought of it before ; when I come home it will 
 be such a pleasure to me to see them again. I only 
 
254 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 wish I could spend twenty dollars a month in photo- 
 graphs and bring home all the places I see. 
 
 Here comes Marie the housekeeper with a little 
 bunch of flowers, for me, because it is the 18th of Au- 
 gust, day of St. Helena, and the doctor has told her 
 it is my " name-day," as they call it. Marie is an old 
 family servant, in whose arms the doctor's mother 
 died, and she keeps house for him, and looks after his 
 interests as if he were a child of her own. She is 
 always, so far as I can judge, either locking up or un- 
 locking some of his goods. Good by, and good by, 
 with love and love. 
 
Bad Gastein, Sunday morning, September 5, 1869. 
 
 DEAKEST PEOPLE : Behold me still in Gastein. 
 Shall I ever go away ? The Fates have it settled, 
 I suppose; but I should not dream of saying that I 
 knew I should do anything so against nature as to 
 leave this eagie's-nest. Booms are engaged for the 
 
 S s and for me at the Bayerischer Hof, in Munich, 
 
 on Monday, the 13th of September. A good man with 
 an einspanner is engaged to take me to Salzburg next 
 Friday and Saturday ; but whether I go or not I shall 
 doubt up to the last minute. Think of coming to stay 
 four days, and staying five weeks. It has been a 
 lesson to me in the matter of clothes ; my black trav- 
 elling dress has come to be to me as much like my skin 
 as if I were a chamois and it were my fur ; to be sure, 
 my wrapper has come out at both elbows, and the 
 washerwomen have torn each of my two nightgowns. 
 There are inconveniences attending the living for five 
 weeks in the clothing intended for four days, it must be 
 owned; but to have found out that one can do it is 
 something. I find myself thinking with some dismay 
 of the big trunk of superfluous things I own in Salz- 
 burg. 
 
 ]STow what shall I tell you about since I have to 
 write a second letter from G-astein ? Did I put in all 
 the mountains and the waterfalls in my last letter? 
 Bless their grand old faces ! if I wrote you a letter 
 every day and all about them, I should never get them 
 in. They are never twice alike. Yesterday they were 
 so cold and stern that it would have been easy to be 
 afraid. To-day they are so soft and warm that they 
 bring tears into my eyes. If they look like this the day 
 
256 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 I go away it will break my heart. I must put more 
 pictures into this letter to try and show you a little 
 more of this wonderful blessed spot. But there is no 
 picture of the view I want most to send you, and that 
 is the view from the balconies of this house. I do not 
 sleep on the balcony, but that is the only thing I do not 
 do on it. I live and move and have my being on it. 
 The town is at my feet, — that you can understand from 
 the picture ; but you cannot understand how the oppo- 
 site side of the valley — that is, the east wall — looks, and 
 that is the glory of all. It is the whole of a mountain, 
 and to the south and north of it are other mountains, 
 and they have their feet braced and interlocked with 
 each other in that wonderful way which mountains 
 have, whereby are made depths of valleys and ravine 
 beds for streams. Into three such valleys — no, not 
 into them, but across them — I look now ; they come 
 down at nearly right angles into the Gastein and the 
 Bockstein valley ; and to-day they are all so flooded 
 with sun, that way up, almost to the very top, I can 
 see the shadow of each fir-tree thrown on the ground. 
 We have not had so delicious a sun for a week; my 
 feet are toasting in it at this moment as before a wood- 
 fire. I am afraid I shall have to draw them in from the 
 lattice-work of the balcony (which makes my best 
 cricket), for I think the thermometer would be about 
 110° just at my toes; and yet the air is so cool that I 
 like a shawl, or even a waterproof, over my shoulders; 
 and at six o'clock to-night I shall have a wood-fire in 
 my stove. 
 
 0, how shall I tell you about this opposite hillside ! 
 It cries out to me to let it alone, that not even an 
 artist could paint it, it is enough that it is ; but I am 
 restless with my desire to make you see it. It is 
 eight thousand feet high, to begin with. At top it 
 is bald and bleak, many days snowy ; but, so far up that 
 I cannot distinguish the points of the fir-trees, it is 
 green, green as a field of spring wheat. Fancy it ! Half 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 257 
 
 forest, half pasture ; little brown threads of fence lining 
 it off here and there, and here and there a little brown 
 house or barn. One third of the way up is a small 
 white house, the Wmdischgratz Cafe. Up to that I 
 
 climbed, day before yesterday, with poor little E 
 
 K carried in a trag-sessel (sedan-chair). Ever since 
 
 I have been here it has been beckoning me up there, but 
 the day never came for it until Friday. I thought I knew 
 how high it was; but when I got there and looked 
 down into the valley of Hof-G-astein on one side, and 
 Bockstein on the other, and saw all the village of my 
 G-astein in a little confused dark mass at my feet, 
 and the Villa Proll, which I thought in the clouds, 
 down almost out of sight under a wood, then I found 
 out how high the Wmdischgratz Coffee-house is ; and 
 now you can remember that I tell you that it is cer- 
 tainly not more than one third of the way up the 
 mountain wall, out on which I look all day ; and, re- 
 membering this, can you begin to see what I see ? In 
 the early morning, when the sun is but just above it, it 
 is all in soft mist, great broad beams of mist such as we 
 see when we say " the sun is drawing water." Until 
 eleven o'clock I always think that this is its most 
 beautiful time ; then it is in clear sun, and I can count 
 every shadow of every tree, and almost see down to 
 the very roots of the trees in the forests, and I think 
 that is the most beautiful time ; and then in the late 
 afternoon, when it darkens again, and the fir-trees look 
 black and the fields look gray, I think that is the most 
 beautiful time. This is the way with lovers. Do you 
 not pity me that I go away? If I do not suffer a little 
 at first, like a transplanted tree, it will be strange. 
 Have you any wonder what I do in this valley that I 
 love it so ? I should think you would have, but I am 
 afraid I shall be as puzzled as the fir-trees to tell. 
 In the morning at seven, Marie, the housekeeper, 
 comes and gives a shadowy little knock at my door, 
 thinking perhaps I may be asleep, though she has 
 
 Q 
 
258 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 never yet found me so in all these four weeks. She 
 comes in with a jingle like a sleigh, for she has the 
 keys of everything hanging at her waist. " Kiss the 
 hand, madame," she says. "Slept well?0, good, 
 good! " and " Fine weather," she adds, if she can, and 
 if she can't, she holds her tongue like a Christian, 
 and don't mention the weather at all. Then I tell her 
 what I will have for breakfast, and as I lumber out 
 the words worse and worse each time, she says, 
 " Ah ! madame speaks very good Dutch, very good." 
 Meantime, Irma, who is the little chambermaid, has 
 brought me two enormous great brown jugs of water, 
 and a wooden tub, and a decanter of the warm spring- 
 water, with which I am trying faithfully to treat my 
 throat; the dear enthusiast Dr. Proll having assured 
 me over and over that if I will only gargle the throat 
 with this water several times a day, I will never, no, 
 never, have another sore-throat. Believing that my 
 " chief end " was to have sore-throats, and not believ- 
 ing very firmly in any kind of mineral waters, I naturally 
 do not remember to gargle my throat so many times a 
 day as I might ; so when the next sore-throat arrives, 
 Dr. Proll will be entitled to the benefit of the doubt 
 as to whether it would have come if Gastein water had 
 been faithfully used. Breakfast comes in on a tray 
 covered with a snow-clean napkin, — tiny little white 
 teapot of tea, tinier white teapot of hot water, baby- 
 house pitcher of milk, — teapot has a silver strainer at 
 nose, and is as pretty as a picture ; but the nose is all 
 wrong, and the tea runs anywhere but in the strainer. 
 
 "■I wish one thing to the man that has made these 
 teapots," says Dr. Proll, "that he might be condemned 
 for two thousand of years to do a pour out of one of 
 them." 
 
 Besides the tea, I have a glass of milk, which Marie 
 has strained into the tumbler the night before, so there 
 is thick cream on the top; a plate of "house bread," 
 which is brown and hard, and has anise seeds in it ; a 
 
ENCYCLICALS Of A TRAVELLER. 2Sg 
 
 plate of white bread, which is as good as anything which 
 is not home-made bread can be ; a saucer of raspberries 
 or blueberries, or an egg^ and the last evening Post ; — 
 that is my breakfast. After breakfast, Marie comes to 
 take the tray, then I pay for my breakfast, and make 
 her laugh at my German numerals, as I insist on add- 
 ing it all up myself. How much does it cost ? Butter, 
 7 kreutzers ; milk, 6 ; bread, 7 ; tea, 20 ; raspberries, 8, 
 — 48 kreutzers in all, — and a kreutzer is, as near as I 
 can make out, about three fifths of a cent. Then, when 
 I have paid for my breakfast, comes the ordering of 
 dinner; this takes dictionary, and Marie and I have 
 great fun over it. There is n't much more variety about 
 my dinners than about my gowns. So far as the meat 
 is concerned, it is beefsteak or chicken ; then on many 
 days comes what Marie calls "ros-bif," and that is 
 simply beefsteak cut from another part of the ox and 
 cooked the same way. They call nothing a steak, 
 except what we call " porter-house steaks." I have 
 now brought Marie to the point of being able to bake 
 potatoes, boil rice, and broil a steak " rare " ; so I con- 
 sider my self a missionary to the good doctor's kitchen. 
 After Marie is disposed of I settle down in my corner 
 of the balcony, and read or write all the morning ; 
 then I take a walk, and then comes dinner at one or 
 at two. Sometimes the dinner is in the doctor's office, 
 because just at present a very grand Hungarian countess 
 has the saloon ; sometimes it is in the " pavilion." 
 That sounds grand. Well, now that the woodbine has 
 turned to crimson and yellow and white, it is grander 
 than any royal pavilion in the world ; but except for 
 the woodbine it is only a little rough wooden house 
 with two sides open, a plank floor over the rock, and 
 wooden chairs and a table. To-day we dined there, 
 and the sun shone through the wall of woodbine, filling 
 the air with reds which cannot be uttered. 
 
 While we are dining, come messengers from the 
 north, south, east, and west, to call the doctor; never 
 
2 6o ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 yet have I seen him left ten minutes uninterrupted. 
 " Ah ! " he says, " at the gate St. Peter will say, ' Who 
 are you ? ' 'I have been physician at G-astein.' 
 ' Then you can come in immediately ; you need not go 
 to purgatory. You have had it already ! ' " 
 
 After dinner a snatch of German legend, or an ex- 
 perience from Dr. Proll's own life, which is all like a 
 legend ; and then he is off again for the rest of the day 
 and most of the night. This wonderful man, fifty- 
 three years old, walks seven and eight hours a day, 
 seeing patients, and talks sometimes with sixty people 
 in one day, for all the peasants flock to him ; runs 
 this lodging-house with only a faithful old house- 
 keeper to help him ; keeps all the meteorological 
 records of Gastein; writes till midnight and after; 
 and then is up, and down in the town at 5 a. m., to see 
 to people in the vapor-bath ! It is such a pity that 
 some story-wright should not have had this month 
 under Dr. Proll's roof that I have had ; it would make 
 a good foundation for a novel. But I have been so 
 stupid, I have sat dreaming away over the mountains 
 and have not written out the stories I have heard and 
 the people I have seen; and next week will come 
 Munich and pictures, and then Vienna and more pic- 
 tures, and the woodbine pavilion will fade away. That is 
 the thing that grieves one most in Europe, that the pic- 
 tures will, in spite of you, wipe each other out. Venice 
 has grown dim already. I see that by the time I come 
 home these letters will be as interesting to me as they 
 can ever have been to you. Well, in the afternoon is 
 either a drive or a walk, and then the sunset, and then 
 bed, after another season with Marie on the subject of 
 supper, — which consists, if I am frugal, of bread and 
 butter and milk ; if I am extravagant, of trout and 
 bread and butter and beer. 
 
 This is all there is to a day at Gastein, but when I 
 go away next Friday, I shall have spent thirty-five 
 such days in perfect content; and if I acted out my 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2(5l 
 
 heartiest impulse I should stay thirty-five more. How 
 many of you will understand it, I wonder, that with 
 Munich and Vienna on the " boards," I cling to Gas- 
 tein ? Nobody of you all, except you who have been 
 with me at Bethlehem. 
 
 Yesterday we went to Bockstein, the little village 
 three miles farther up the valley, or rather three miles 
 farther on, in a valley of its own, which used, like this 
 
 G-astein valley, to be a lake. " We " means Mrs. K , 
 
 and her poor little daughter E , who cannot walk| 
 
 Miss S , their cousin, and I, in a big carriage ; and 
 
 Dr. Proll and Mr. H in an einspanner. I cannot tell 
 
 you about the machinery of the gold-mill, which was 
 what we went to see, for I do not remember the names of 
 the " things " ; but if I could only make you see the old 
 water-wheels which are standing still there ! Really 
 they look as if Shem, Ham, and Japhet had set them up 
 in the days of the beginning of water-privileges, and 
 had soon got tired of the business and sold out. Black, 
 crumbling, and moss-grown, there the wheels stand and 
 drip, drip, drip, — for the water still runs, as it ran in 
 the days when the Weitmosers worked the gold-mine, 
 through big water-pipes and sluices through the mid- 
 dle of the village. You can see, in the picture of the 
 village, that in the middle of it the houses all seem to 
 join ; that is where the gold-mill and the long galleries 
 and water-pipes are. All the machinery looked as if 
 it were aching to fall apart, so old and so tired ! It 
 seemed somehow unchristian to let it stay unburied. 
 An old workman went about with us and explained 
 where _ the gold-stones were broken, and where the 
 quicksilver was put in pans, and where it was all 
 melted over fire. Above the furnace, was an old dial- 
 plate like a clock, with figures and hands to mark the 
 heat which the metal had reached in boiling, — how 
 more than mute it looked ! — and on the edges of the 
 furnace were mouldy fungus growths. After this was 
 over, being in Germany, we thought of eating, and 
 
262 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 drew up before the little inn. Carriages were stand- 
 ing in the yard, and people drinking beer round tables 
 in front of the windows. 
 
 Could we have trout? No. Chicken? No. Beef- 
 steak ? No. What could we have ? Yeal and eggs. 
 The strangers from Gastein had eaten up everything 
 else which the Bbckstein inn possessed. Veal and 
 eggs are the two staple delights of the G-erman stom- 
 ach ; the veal steaming with fat and mustard, and the 
 eggs horrible with butter and garlic. Ugh ! All my 
 life I shall remember the egg-salad which dear Marie 
 added to our dinner yesterday, and of which I tasted, 
 to appear civil, but was positively obliged to swallow 
 hastily, like calomel, by help of great mouthfuls of 
 beer. I thought I had tasted of bad things in Italy, 
 but I give Germany the unquestioned palm. I am 
 anxious to know whether the great students and think- 
 ers of Germany eat the same sorts of food which I have 
 seen in Berchtesgaden and Gastein. If they do, it is 
 plain that for the German nation has been made by the 
 Creator some peculiar and especial provision by which 
 brains are independent of stomachs ; yet dyspepsia is a 
 rare disease here. 
 
 After we had to abandon the idea of a supper at the 
 
 inn, Dr. Proll took me in the einspanner, and the K 
 
 party drove back disconsolate to Gastein ; but I — ah, 
 where did I go then ? To the end of civilized roads, 
 up, up, up, through the ravine that you see in the 
 picture, to the very end of the road. It was the wildest 
 spot I have ever seen. Look carefully at the picture, 
 and there will be no need of my describing it. Be- 
 yond this, there is no getting out of this valley except 
 by two very dangerous passes, on foot or on horse- 
 back, over into Carinthia. By one of these, Yenice can 
 be reached in three days and a half, my guide-book 
 says. I think it means three years and a half. I 
 know I am no nearer than that to the Grand Canal and 
 Luigi. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2 6 3 
 
 Here comes Marie with a moss-basket full of forget- 
 me-nots and crimson adonis and strawberry-leaves. 
 Marie is a weather-beaten old woman of fifty, but she 
 has youth in her soul for flowers. Everywhere that 
 she can set a pot she has flowers growing, and fine 
 fuchsias in among her beets ! The garden, which is a 
 collection of bits of soil tucked in among rocks and on 
 steps, is her special province, and twinkles in the sun 
 like her own quick-winking eyes. I always think, 
 when I look out of my window, that it is going up 
 the hill, and will be out of sight presently, there is so 
 much more staircase to it than anything else. Wild 
 ferns and pink heath are here and there in unreclaimed 
 corners of it, and great piles of mossy rock, with fir- 
 trees, and the pavilion, and a tent, and an arbor, and a 
 sun-dial, and a barometer, and a rain-measurer, and I 
 do not know what not. And Marie's sister, who is 
 a rough peasant but is a true clairvoyant, and has 
 given the doctor most wonderful experimental tests 
 of the "Od," — doing and saying and revealing things 
 which she no more understood than if she had spoken 
 in G-reek, — is always to be seen groping about pur- 
 poselessly and giving little pulls to the beets and peas 
 and potatoes, as if she were pulling invisible wires and 
 sounding bells beneath. She never pulls them up, so 
 far as I can see. The doctor says, " She likes to do 
 it." How much he pays her a week for this work I 
 have not asked. She has her face bound up in a white 
 handkerchief and wears list shoes which make no 
 noise. Marie always gives her a shove, I notice, when 
 she comes near her, and this is all I perceive. But I 
 ought to tell about Marie. Eighteen years ago she 
 was a patient of the doctor's here in G-astein. At the 
 same time a very poor old woman was dying in a hut 
 here, of a horrible disease. When the doctor told Marie 
 of her, she went instantly to the hut, and (sick herself) 
 stayed and nursed the old woman till she died. The old 
 woman lay on straw. Marie, when she lay anywhere, 
 
264 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER, 
 
 lay on the bare boards of the top of a chest. From 
 that day Marie has been the protector of the sick and 
 dying of the doctor's family. She went to Venice, 
 and for several years nursed a paralytic uncle who 
 could not even feed himself. He died in her arms. 
 Then she went to Nice and nursed his brother through 
 three years' dying of consumption ; he died in her arms. 
 Then his mother last of all. and she, with almost her 
 last breath, blessed Marie. Now Marie will never 
 leave the doctor himself, and so strong is her passion 
 for nursing, that I believe in the bottom of her heart 
 she feels a kind of divine satisfaction when she sees the 
 last illness approaching. I know she took more com- 
 fort in a sore-throat that I had for two days than in 
 anything else that has happened since I came. She 
 has given her whole heart to me, because I am the 
 u only lady she ever had in the house who was as nice 
 as a gentleman ! " This sounds like equivocal praise, 
 but it is not. She loves me because she sees that she 
 pleases me in all her ways. Every day she makes 
 some new kind of German pudding for dinner, and 
 eyes me like a hawk while I take the first mouthful ; 
 and every day, now she knows I am going away, she 
 sighs and says, "It will be sorrow to Marie when 
 maclame goes." So I acid her to Marianina in my book 
 of remembrance ; and, if it came to being sick, I should 
 like Marianina to look at, but Marie to take care of 
 me. On the 18th of August (that was the day after 
 the Emperor's birthday, and the illumination, etc., of 
 which I wrote you), Marie came in to dinner bringing 
 a bunch of roses and forget-me-nots, and laid them by 
 my plate, looking shyly at the doctor, who explained 
 for her, "Marie thinks to give you a pleasure because 
 it is your name day." It seems that in G-ermany the 
 Catholics think more of the day which is called by the 
 name of the saint whose name you bear, than they 
 do of your birthday. 18th of August, I shall never 
 forget now, is " St. Helen's " day. (Glad there 's been a 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TEA VELLER. 
 
 265 
 
 St. Helen already, because one of a name is enough. 
 So I need not — ) But next St. Helen's day there will 
 be no Marie to bring me roses and forget-me-nots. 
 How the forget-me-nots hold on here ! You can't 
 imagine ! They flower and flower, and grow and grow ; 
 there does n't seem to be any die to them. I have had 
 them in a tumbler for ten days at a time, growing 
 taller and taller, and as blue at the last as at the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 Wednesday, 8th. — There is nothing new to tell you 
 to-day, except what the sun did this morning. At 
 seven o'clock the whole valley was filled dense and 
 thick with solid white clouds ; it fairly seemed to roll 
 in between the slats of the lattice-work of my balcony. 
 I have seen nothing like it before. Newport's densest 
 is not so white, so solid. All of a sudden it lit up as 
 if fires were kindled behind it. The sun had got fairly 
 up over the mountain, and was driving all before him. 
 In a few moments there began to come rifts in it, through 
 which I could see bits of fir-wood and pasture on the 
 mountains, gleaming with sunshine. Then the tops of 
 the mountains came out clear, and the solid banks of 
 cloud rolled and piled and struggled below. Some 
 were gray, some were silver- white, some were yellow, 
 and some were pale pink. No sunset ever was so beau- 
 tiful. For an hour they went up and down and back 
 and forth along the whole mountain wall, to east and 
 south and north, as far as I could see. Gradually the 
 colors died out, and the clouds grew fleecier and fleecier, 
 till only little floating films were left here and there, and 
 the whole valley was full of sunlight. I feel as if I had 
 seen a world made. This afternoon I have been in the 
 Platz, buying some more pictures to send to you, and 
 some curious bone boxes made by the peasantry here. 
 I hope those of you to whom I bring one will not scorn 
 it for being scooped out of a cow's horn, and tattooed 
 with ink in queer figures and mottoes. " G-astein " is 
 written on all of them, and that makes them sacred to 
 12 
 
2 66 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 me, but I am afraid you will not have the same romance 
 about it. On the way down I had an interview with 
 the man who is to take me to Salzburg. He is the man 
 who drives a carriage for Dr. Proll ; perfectly trust- 
 worthy and good, and has an uncommonly keen and 
 honest face; but really he looked to me so like my worst 
 enemy I could hardly speak peaceably to him. 
 
 0, here is the time for me to tell you about an 
 einspanner, for that is the thing I am going in, — 
 only I am going in an uncommonly fine one, which can 
 be shut up in case of rain, and is painted in bright 
 green, in imitation of straw-work, on the sides. But, 
 after all, the greatest thing about a einspanner is not the 
 einspanner at all, but the way the horse is put in. The 
 carriage is like one of our common buggies, only very 
 low, and instead of a dasher in front is a tiny low seat 
 with no back, no front, no anything to it, and on this 
 the driver sits, with his feet dangling over among the 
 legs of the horse, or tucked up on the pole. I was just 
 going to say whiffletree, which would have been a 
 great joke, seeing that there is n't anything approach- 
 ing to one about the whole concern. Now for the 
 horse. Out of the centre of your einspanner comes a 
 pole, just as if it were intended for two horses. On the 
 left side of this pole is your horse, fastened by traces 
 which are leather only half-way, and the rest of the 
 way small rope twisted and tied, — and frayed, as like 
 as not, No breeching, — nothing under heaven to 
 prevent your horse from stepping out of the traces on 
 the off side, nothing for him to hold back by, going 
 down hill,— so on the gentlest slopes they lock two of 
 the wheels and put on a brake, and you grind down 
 safely in spite of the cord traces flapping round the 
 horse's heels. The first time I rode in one I was posi- 
 tively afraid, which was a new sensation for me on 
 wheels ; but now I am hardened to them, and feel as 
 comfortable as if I were in the most approved of high- 
 top buggies on the Bloomingdale road. Fancy me 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2 6j 
 
 dashing along for a day and a half all alone in one of 
 them. Keally, the things one does in Europe would 
 seem extraordinary at home. If I started to take a 
 journey of seventy miles in an open wagon, it would 
 sound preposterous there, but here I think nothing of 
 it. I am even thinking of going a little longer way to 
 see some new places. I shall put my letter away now, 
 and add just a few pages after I reach Munich. I think 
 you will like it better if it is not all Gastein, so I shall 
 not send it off, as I had intended, before starting. I 
 cannot expect you all to be Gastein-mad, as I am, and 
 I dare say I shall not be so myself after a few days in a 
 picture-gallery again. 
 
 /Saturday Eve. — Did I not say that I had need to 
 be careful about saying that I would do anything so 
 against nature as to leave G-astein? Behold me re- 
 turned again to sleep in my attic, after having been as 
 far as Hof-G-astein on my way to Salzburg ! 0, how 
 I am laughing, and how queer it all is, and how glad I 
 am of one more sunrise on these mountains ! But this 
 is the way it came about. Till the last minute I had 
 put off starting. At three o'clock this afternoon it was 
 to be. At three o'clock the carriage was here, — a nice 
 little einspanner, which can be shut up tight like a cab. 
 Marie cried hard, and I cried a little. At the last min- 
 ute she appears with a big basket of raw tomatoes and 
 peaches, and a bottle of strong beef-tea, which I taught 
 her to make when I had my sore-throat, and which she 
 considers, I believe, to be a standard American beverage. 
 These are for the journey. A great round bouquet, 
 gorgeous with verbenas, china-asters, pansies, phlox, 
 yellow buttercups, and asparagus, and white openwork 
 tissue paper, comes behind in Irma's little grimy fingers ; 
 another little bunch of roses, fuchsias, and forget-me- 
 nots from Marie's own treasures : the big one is from 
 the flower-store, and I very much fear that Marie gave 
 a whole gulden for it. The doctor goes before, having 
 promised to drive as far as Hof-G-astein with me. What 
 
208 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 is my surprise to see him suddenly fly into the most 
 tremendous rage, and begin to talk loud and gesticulate 
 furiously to some invisible person behind the fir-trees ! 
 I run on to see what has happened, for a voluble G-er- 
 man in a rage is a sight to make you quicken your steps 
 any day ; sure enough, there, instead of the good, faith- 
 ful, steady-going owner of the einspanner, who had 
 promised to take me, was his boy, sixteen years old, 
 who is the most deliciously careless little grinning ras- 
 cal I ever drove behind. The other day, in the space 
 of three hours, he twice ran into a fence, one time com- 
 ing very near killing his horse, and the other time still 
 nearer smashing the wagon ; but he only laughed, and 
 jumped down and tugged away at the back wheels till 
 he got us into the road again. This was a charming 
 escort on a seventy-mile journey. However, I said, 
 "Allah il Allah — I go! " So off we started. The 
 carriage was partly shut up, for already a drizzling rain 
 was setting in. Just before we reached Hof-Gastein it 
 grew colder, and the rain began to drive in at each side. 
 Where were the window pieces? 0, he had not 
 brought them ! Then you should have seen the holy 
 fury of Dr. Proll! I am rather glad to have discov- 
 ered that he can grow red in the face, and abuse peo- 
 ple, like other mortals, because he always seemed a 
 little too much like a saint before. There I was ; noth- 
 ing to Tio but to come back, for to go on in an Alpine 
 storm with the carriage open would be madness ; and 
 the most provoking thing was, that it had only been 
 to save a few pounds' additional weight for his horse, 
 that the man had left the side pieces at home. 0, how 
 disconsolate and black the boy looked when he was 
 ordered to turn round and come back to G-astein ! 
 Every few minutes the exasperated doctor would break 
 out with some hotter and heavier sentence, which 
 sounded like something more fearful than the preceding 
 one. Really, angry G-erman is the most horrible sound 
 I ever heard in my life. Incantation, maledictions, su- 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 269 
 
 pernatural thunderings, and sputterings are in it. When 
 I arrived at the house. Marie, Irma, Rupert, all came run- 
 ning with astonishment so great that their faces looked 
 all eyes. Irma takes out the bouquets and disappears 
 with them ; Marie claps her hands, and says " G-ood, 
 good, it is good, — that now I will not go at all " ; Ru- 
 bert lugs up my hat-box ; the boy with the green ein- 
 spanner drives off more crestfallen than I thought he 
 could look; and here am I at my old writing-table, 
 with a fire in my stove, and candles lit at six o'clock 
 of a September evening. I believe there must be 
 some special providence in the thing, for the storm has 
 increased so fearfully it is almost a gale of rain. I 
 should have been drenched even in a closed carriage 
 before seven o'clock. Now what is to be done next I 
 do not know. I fear the doctor and the einspanner man 
 are now so angry that I have no chance in that green 
 chariot again. I await the news with which the doctor 
 will return to-night from the Platz. In the mean time 
 you have two more pages of G-astein, after all. I 
 should n't wonder if to-morrow there were to arrive a 
 letter or a telegram from somebody, I can't imagine 
 who or what, but somebody or something which should 
 keep me here another month. It would be no odder 
 than my having stayed here this month and having come 
 
 back to-night Here comes the doctor, his face all 
 
 aglow with delight. " Such a miracle ! " he says ; " do I 
 not tell you all is miracle ? A storm is raging out at 
 the end of the valley such as has not been seen for 
 weeks and weeks." I should have driven directly into 
 it and have been at six o'clock in the Klamme, the nar- 
 row pass of which I wrote you ; no, I did not either. 
 Well, it is the wildest sort of a pass ; just room for the 
 road and a river, and tremendous precipices above, on 
 one hand, and below, on the other. In many places 
 the road is on a plank shelf, held on, I don't know how, 
 to the side of the rocky cliffs. It makes me shudder 
 to think of having been overtaken there by this storm, 
 
270 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 with the grinning boy for driver. But more good luck 
 yet. A carriage is here from Salzburg, anxious to get 
 a passenger to return, a good carriage and two horses, 
 for which I pay but one gulden more than for the ein- 
 spanner, and the driver' is a trusty old man who has 
 been on the road for twenty years, and is well known 
 to everybody. At half past six to-morrow morning I 
 start once more, and this time I think it will really be 
 a success. 
 
 Munich, Wednesday, 16th. — Yes, it was a success, if 
 anything can be called so which takes one away from 
 the Gastein valley. Two such days as I had, all alone in 
 my big carriage, with the fatherly old driver, who will 
 puzzle his head to his dying day, I believe, to make out 
 why it was that I went by myself, and what under 
 heaven made me look so delighted all the way. It was 
 such sunshine and such beauty, I even forgot that each 
 mile took me farther from G-astein. Zell-am-See, Saal- 
 felden, Eeichenhall, Salzburg ; but I was two days doing 
 it, and I said everything that was needful at the odd 
 little G-erman inns; and I climbed down into the Seis- 
 senberger Klamme, which is the one spot on earth where 
 chaos reigns ; and my flowers never wilted by a shade 
 during the whole two days, the wonderful G-astein 
 blossoms ! And when I walked into the grand Hotel 
 Europa at Salzburg, I felt like one in a dream, — wait- 
 ers with white cravats, again, mushroom-sauce, and 
 clothes to be seen on all sides ! Heigh-ho ! I slipped 
 my shoulder under the strap once more, and picked up 
 the burden of belonging to the world's people. G-as- 
 tein, Gastein, farewell ! Then came telegraphings be- 
 tween Salzburg and Innspruck, and, of course, misun- 
 derstandings ; and didn't I come on here to Munich 
 stark staring alone, instead of having met my friends at 
 Eosenheim, as I should have done if I had properly 
 understood the arrangement ! At the station here, a 
 providential man who spoke English ! Always I find 
 one when I am in straits, and this time the straits were 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 271 
 
 dreadful. I shudder to think what I should have done 
 without that man. In the country I don't mind ; with my 
 dictionary I get on ; but at a railroad station in a city ! 
 I should have turned and run away, I think, and never 
 been heard of more. Two hours later, by the next train, 
 
 arrived poor P and N , equally bewildered and 
 
 unhappy at not finding me. Now we are settled, and 
 have seen the Prince of Prussia. We came out of the 
 hotel ahead of him too. Four black horses, riders in 
 blue and silver on the two near horses, riders in blue 
 and silver high up behind coach in blue and silver, 
 rider in blue and silver on another black horse gallop- 
 ing before ! The prince wore a stove-pipe hat, and 
 looked, as every man looks who wears a stove-pipe 
 hat, like any other man's barber ; but the horses and 
 the blue and silver were gay to see. 
 
 Munich looks to me, after three hours' driving in it, 
 about as interesting as a brick-kiln, and more like it than 
 anything else. Bricks unbaked and all stamped same 
 pattern. But all that this century can do in the way 
 of pictures is to be seen here now, so I mean to look. 
 Carpaccio's St. Ursula is worth more than the whole 
 of it, I suspect. 
 
 Good by, and good by, and good by. 
 
272 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 Munich, Monday, October 4, 1869. 
 
 DEAR PEOPLE : Behold me, once more alone, 
 left to myself for four days in this G-erman city. 
 The girls have just started on their journey south- 
 ward, — Innspruck, Botzen, Yerona, Florence, Rome. 
 It sounds better than my programme, does it not? 
 mine being Nuremberg, Cologne, Rotterdam, London. 
 But, ah, how joyful I am, to be, at last, moving to the 
 North ! I had planned to set out at the same time they 
 did, i. e. nine o'clock this morning ; but at the last mo- 
 ment the dear Fraulein Hahlreiner, in whose house 
 we lodged for two weeks, said if I would wait until 
 Friday she would go with me. This I was but too 
 glad to do, for of the only two women I could find who 
 spoke English and were willing to take the journey, 
 I could not tell which I disliked the more. One wished 
 to go as my bosom-friend, and the other was a simple- 
 ton. But the Fraulein! You '11 have enough of her, 
 though, before you are done, for my letter will be full 
 of her. 
 
 I cannot tell you very much about Munich, I think. 
 See New York Independent for my opinions as to the 
 outside look of it, and did I. not tell you in the last 
 letter also ? I forget. But all I shall bring away from 
 Munich will be pictures. Think of my having seen, in 
 this short time, nearly four thousand ! Of course I do 
 not remember distinctly one hundred of them, but I 
 have learned the different touch of the different paint- 
 ers, and know whom I love. 
 
 More and more I wonder what art would have done 
 if Christ and his mother Mary had not lived on the 
 earth. More than one gospel we owe them. Nobody 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 273 
 
 will ever paint anything so sweet as Bellini's and Yan 
 Dyck's Madonnas, or so pure and strong as Fra Angelico 
 believed the old saints to be. The only Christs I have 
 seen at which I can look are Yan Dyck's. One was a 
 head in an old palace at Genoa. I wrote you about it. 
 It had a look of John Weiss made martyr. The other 
 is a crucifixion here in the Pinakothek. Yan Dyck 
 dares to make his Christ dark and strong and stern 
 with suffering. Everybody else paints him a gentle, 
 inefficient-looking creature, with long hair parted in the 
 middle. It is something I cannot understand. The 
 type began in the old seventh-century frescos, and 
 from that day to this, so far as I can see, Yan Dyck is 
 the only man who has departed from it. 
 
 Now, for these four days, I shall do only two things, 
 — write, and go to the Pinakothek. I have done the 
 Exposition (and you can all read it in the Independent), 
 and now I am going to spend three whole forenoons 
 with Albert Diirer, Yan Dyck, Rembrandt, Gerard 
 Dow, Murillo, Teniers, Yan der Werff, Cuyp, Paul' 
 Potter, Titian, Yeronese, and Raphael, Holbein, Meister 
 William of Cologne, and half a dozen more whose 
 names I won't write. Don't think I look at every- 
 body's pictures out of the four thousand, or at first one 
 and then another man's, as most people do. I look at 
 such people (and they are everybody) with perfect 
 astonishment. I can't do it, any more than I could 
 read fifty books at a time, a few lines from one and 
 then from another, and so on. That would be pre- 
 cisely the same thing. I look at Murillo, for instance, 
 for a day, and at nobody else. There are six lovely 
 pictures of his in the Pinakothek. Such delicious 
 beggars, and such a good time as they have ! There 
 is one boy with a great mouthful of melon in one 
 cheek that I shall never forget ; and another with his 
 head thrown back, eating grapes. I had seen the 
 engravings before ; but they are nothing, the coloring 
 is all. 
 
 12* R 
 
274 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 But I write to you too much about pictures. I re- 
 member I used to think it the most stupid reading in 
 the world, other people's notions of pictures which I 
 had not seen. 
 
 Tliursday Morning, October 14, 1869. — On the Rhine, 
 four hours above Rotterdam ; rolled up in blankets to 
 keep warm. 
 
 Ah, but it 's a great thing to have come down the 
 Rhine! 0, how shall I ever tell you the worry and 
 the strain of it ! With any less of a genius than my 
 Fraulein I should never have got through. I shudder 
 when I think of the time I should have had with the 
 simpleton or the bosom companion. But I will begin 
 back. Last Friday morning we left Munich for Nurem- 
 berg. I had read in Murray that the Wiirtemberger 
 Hof was " good, clean, and moderate/' so I telegraphed 
 from the station at Munich to the Wiirtemberger Hof 
 for two rooms. Arrived in Nuremberg at 9 p. m., 
 confidently we said to men in crowd, "We go to the 
 Wiirtemberger Hof." Crowd lifted up its voice, and 
 said there was no Wiirtemberger Hof. I, being by 
 nature obstinate, and having Murray in my hand, said 
 there was. Poor Fraulein, in despair, dumped me in 
 the waiting-room and went off to see. She came back 
 with, " My dear lady, she do not exist these now four 
 years, the Hotel Wiirtemberger." So we followed a 
 small boy, with a glass of beer in his hand, down the 
 square to the Nuremberger Hof, to which we found 
 our telegram had been sent, and which is the very 
 worst hotel I have seen in Europe. Next day it was 
 a pouring rain. Nevertheless, I saw Nuremberg. A 
 carriage, which might have been at Albert Diirer's 
 funeral, I think, and two skeleton horses, and the Frau- 
 lein and I lumbering in and out under umbrellas, the 
 Nuremberghers saw in their streets for five hours that 
 day. 
 
 Old frescos by Durer, old dungeons worse than any 
 in Venice, most wonderful old churches, (I send you 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 275 
 
 pictures of all,) such instruments of torture as I have 
 read of, but never fairly believed in, Albert Diirer's 
 grave and statue, Hans Sach's grave, the castle, 
 street after street of odd old houses, with windows to 
 make your mouth water, fountains by Peter Vischer, 
 shops of such worsted miracles and silver carvings 
 and amber necklaces, — 0, 1 am wretched now to think 
 that I could not spend $ 100 in five minutes in those 
 shops ! 
 
 Never any of you try to see Nuremberg in a day. 
 It is a place to ramble in for a week, to study corners 
 and doorsteps and odd shadowy places, and in St. 
 Lawrence's and St. Sebald's churches to spend morn- 
 ings and evenings. I must go back some day with 
 some of you. Who speaks ? That Iron Virgin I must 
 tell you about. It is gray stone, and the picture is ex- 
 actly like it. It is in the last chamber of a series of 
 dungeons under the wall of the city. Those two doors 
 swing open. Inside they are set with horrible iron 
 spikes in the head and the chest. When the person 
 was placed inside, the doors were pressed slowly to- 
 gether by a great iron bar which comes from the wall 
 opposite. It could not take many seconds to kill one 
 so; that was the only consolation to think of ; it was. 
 not really so cruel as some of the simpler-looking 
 methods. Under the feet is a trap-door through which 
 the body fell, eight feet down into the canal, and so out 
 into the river. I looked down ; but poor Fraulein said, 
 " Mein G-ott, mein G-ott ! " and turned so pale that I 
 was afraid the great hearty creature would faint away, 
 and how should we ever have got her out of those 
 winding stone caverns ! Everywhere she said such 
 striking things that I was lost in astonishment at her. 
 But I can't tell them to you here, because if I do you 
 will none of you care anything about my story which 
 I am. going to make of her as soon as I get to London. 
 Blessed old darling ! I only wish I could take her for 
 the rest of my life, wherever I go. 
 
276 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 From Nuremberg to Mayence, nothing worth telling. 
 From Mayence to Cologne, first day on the Ehine ! 
 Ha, my people, do you think I am going to send you a 
 letter full of ecstasies about the Rhine ? Not I. When 
 the boat first pushed off from Mayence I said to myself 
 — No ! I won't tell you what I said ; but for several 
 hours I was the most damped creature you ever saw. 
 The Fraulein had never before seen it, never before 
 been in a large boat. " 0, my lady, find you not this 
 boat very large ? " And when I told her that I was 
 only astonished to find it so small, she was dumb with 
 incredulous surprise. There were three American wo- 
 men on the deck, who were " doing " the Rhine so zeal- 
 ously, reading aloud from Murray at every ruin and 
 castle, that somehow I took a sudden perverse disgust 
 to the whole thing, and for the first time in my whole 
 year I played the blase traveller. The truth is, that 
 one should never see the Coliseum and the tomb of 
 Cecilia Metella before seeing the ruins on the Rhine ; 
 after them, nothing else this side of Palestine can look 
 like more than a middle-aged house " out of repair." 
 And, above all, one should not come from Tyrol down 
 the Rhine ; remember that, all of you who mean Rhine 
 and Tyrol some day. G-o to the Tyrol, up the Rhine, 
 and then perhaps you will get a Rhine! I honestly 
 own I have not had any. It won't " take. " Well, 
 
 we went on shore at Cologne (0, I must not 
 
 forget to tell you that they have built up a nice new 
 old arch where Roland's real old, old arch fell down last 
 year. It looks quite well against the sky, after you 
 get far enough off, and the island below is really just 
 as lovely as the ninety-nine thousand tourists have 
 said.) 
 
 At Cologne we were splendidly lodged at the Hotel 
 du Nord, in which I had to sleep with my head to the 
 south ; bright and early we set out to find the man 
 who sold tickets " through" to London. If there is any 
 creature in the world that rouses my ire, it is the porter 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2 jy 
 
 in a first-class European city hotel. Their assistance is 
 odious to me even in my greatest extremity, and their 
 politeness so flavored with impudence that I boil. I 
 have n't yet fathomed the mystery. I do not under- 
 stand the species. Such a one I met in the doorway. 
 Would he give me the address of the agent for the 
 steamboat line for Rotterdam and London ? 
 
 " Madame wished to go to London ? " with a bow 
 and a smile. 
 
 " Can you give me the address ? " 
 
 " The agent will be here at eleven o'clock ; he comes 
 every day to make all the arrangements for passengers 
 for our house." 
 
 " I do not wish to wait, I wish to see him at once ; 
 will you give me the address ? " 
 
 "I can give you all the information, madame, my- 
 self, and save you the trouble of going to the office." 
 
 " Will you, or will you not, give me the address ? " said 
 I, — thundered I, would be more true, for 0, how mad 
 I was ! Then I got it, and the porter went back into 
 'his office, muttering to himself, I suppose, that Ameri- 
 canerins were all bears. 
 
 Poor Fraulein stood by, silent and aghast. " Find 
 you that man respectful, my lady ? " she said, after we 
 were in the street. 
 
 " O no," said I, " quite impertinent." 
 
 " I thought so," she said. " 0, but I hate these peo- 
 ple in this north country ! " 
 
 Well, we drove to ISTo. 12 Frederick William Strasse ; 
 grand office ; " London, Calais, and Dover R. R." over 
 the door. " dear ! " thinks I. " However, I'll ask." 
 Grand cockney in white vest. " I wish to make some 
 inquiries about the route to London via Rotterdam, and 
 I was sent here ; is this the place ? " 
 
 " You wish to go to London ? " 
 
 " Well," said I to myself, " Yankees are not alone in 
 asking needless questions." However, I thought best 
 to conciliate this bull, and I said I did, for reasons best 
 
278 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 known to myself, wish to do that very thing. " But I 
 certainly would not go via Rotterdam." Their line, via 
 Ostend, was so much shorter, quicker, etc., — a ten 
 minutes' harangue from a prospectus. At last I got out 
 of him the address of the office of the Netherlands 
 Steamship Company, and down to the wharves we 
 drove. A little box of a building, and a mild, surprised 
 young man, and " yes, they did sell through tick- 
 ets to London, but no direct line through except on 
 Sunday morning. Yes, I could wait at Rotterdam, or 
 take a run up to Sweden and Norway, or somewhere, 
 and in eight days I could be in London." I was in 
 despair; at last I said, "But there is surely another 
 company ? " "0 yes ; the Cologne and Dusseldorf." 
 " Ah, where was that ? " He told me, bowed blandly, 
 and resumed his writing as if such little conversations 
 were frequent at his desk. 
 
 More wharves, another little box building, another 
 clerk selling tickets to people that looked like emigrants. 
 This seemed more promising. Could I get a through 
 ticket to London? " yes; but I would have to wait 
 in Rotterdam over one day." Just what I wished. 
 Then I was passed over to another man, an old man 
 with big benevolence in the forehead, and he explained 
 to me that I could go at 3 p. m. that day to Dussel- 
 dorf, at 8 a. m. next day to Arnheim, and there, wheth- 
 er there would or could not be a boat he could not say, 
 but, at any rate, I could take cars to Rotterdam from 
 there, and the whole ticket was so cheap I did not mind 
 that at all, and I felt all the safer because he did not 
 guarantee where he was not sure. He believed there 
 would be a boat at Arnheim. Could he check my big 
 trunk for London ? Yes. So I bought my ticket ; only 
 40 francs for me to London, and Fraulein to Arnheim ! 
 Remember that, you who mean to come, you can get 
 from London to Cologne for $ 7 less this way. 
 
 Then I set out to see Cologne, took a look at the 
 church where St. Ursula's Virgins' bones are laid, (this 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 279 
 
 I did for love of dear old Carpaccio's pictures in Venice. 
 You remember?) then St. Gereon, which is a grand 
 old church; here were skulls of martyrs set over door- 
 ways, behind railings, skulls set back side to the front, 
 or else the eyes and nose and mouth were all wrapped 
 in red velvet or damask, I could not make out which it 
 was : then the house where Rubens lived and Marie 
 de Medicis died ; and then the Gurzenich, which is a 
 handsome stone building, and has two nice old fellows 
 in stone set under pent-house roofs in the front. And 
 then the Apostles' Church, and the house near by, where 
 are two stone heads of horses looking out of the third- 
 story window, to commemorate the coming to life of 
 Mrs. Somebody who was buried in that church, and, 
 not being dead, returned quickly to her home and 
 walked in on Mr. Somebody before he had decided 
 what to do about it, and says he, " You are not my wife 
 any more than my horses can be up in the third-story 
 room " ; and pop ! out come the horses' heads, at that 
 very minute, out of the third-story window ; and the 
 stone heads aie there still to .prove the story, which of 
 course they do. 
 
 Then a dinner at a cafe ; poor Fraulein turning white 
 with horror at the prices and the quality. 
 
 u my lady, find you this chicken good ? She are ' 
 old, old chicken ; never had I courage to give old chicken 
 in my house. Now I give. O, I win much money from 
 this journey I " 
 
 After dinner, the cathedral, two hours free for it. 
 Those of you who have seen it will not wonder that I 
 have nothing to say about it; those of you who have not 
 must forgive me. I cannot say one word. It is more 
 wonderful than any words. If I said that by miracle 
 a stone mountain had flowered in spire and arch and 
 statue till there was not room for one single flower 
 more to be set, that is rny nearest word to what I saw 3 
 and so near that I think that somebody else must have 
 said it before me. 
 
280 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 At half past two behold Fraulein and me down on 
 wharf again, (0, I forgot to say that there are now 
 17,000 different smells in Cologne, besides the Farina!) 
 and at the little box-office door. Women and babies 
 and bundles round the doorstep. I felt like Castle Gar- 
 den. No old man of the morning, no clerk, no boat. 
 One mortal hour passed; old man arrived; in half an 
 hour more the boat. Things and people and we driz- 
 zled in as if all day were before us. I took a last, long, 
 lingering look at my trunk, and tried to believe I should 
 ever see it again. It must go by another boat to be 
 sure of getting past Arnheim. Now J am sorry I did 
 not bring it with me, but I was over-persuaded by the 
 old man with benevolence big. 
 
 On deck I see an unmistakable English bonnet. The 
 bonnet sprang up and said, " Oh ! oh ! do you know 
 when this boat will start ? " 
 
 " Immediately, I think." 
 
 "But there has been an accident to it." 
 
 "Oh ! oh ! " said I, and my heart sank. 
 
 " Yes ; and each man says a different thing, and we 
 have had no dinner, and I have just left a most beloved 
 daughter at school at Neuwied, and I have cried the 
 whole night, and I look like a fright," said she, lifting 
 up her frightful black lace veil spotted with white, and 
 showing a very pleasant, clean face. 
 
 " 0, bless you ! " thought I, " you are a godsend 
 anyhow, if you are going to talk in this way." 
 
 Then came along the husband, a good-looking, brown- 
 eyed, brown-whiskered man, who talked through his 
 nose quite as much as any American I ever saw, and 
 we fell to immediately and wondered what would turn 
 up, and if we should ever get to Dusseldorf. In comes 
 old man with big benevolence, and says, " "We can tell 
 in half an hour whether we can go on to-night or not ! " 
 Half-hour was one hour. O, how much that woman 
 told me in that time ! 
 
 Then we started for Dusseldorf. 1, being half dead 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2 8t 
 
 ■with a cold which I had taken sleeping in the damp 
 layers of sodden flax which they call sheets in Cologne, 
 had to curl myself up in a corner of the cabin and make 
 the best of solitude and darkness. Every few minutes 
 came down the Fraulein to tell me what the English 
 lady had said, and to see how I got on. At 9 p. m. 
 Dusselclorf! English advocate said Hotel Europe was 
 the one they had selected to go to. Out we filed; two 
 men ahead carrying English advocate's valise and my 
 hat-box ; English advocate's wife and I hugging on to 
 each other like old friends ; Fraulein and English advo- 
 cate roaming about loose on the outer edges of the pro- 
 cession ; dark as midnight. Nobody seemed to know 
 exactly what we were to do ; each thought somebody 
 else was taking responsibility. 
 
 " Halt ! " Plump down go valises and hat-box in 
 middle of street ; custom-house officer with lantern ! 
 
 " Have you meat or sausage ? " said he, twinkling his 
 eyes with fun to see how little we looked like sausage- 
 smugglers, and how scared we were at the idea of hav- 
 ing trunks opened in the dead of night in the streets 
 of Dusseldorf. 
 
 Then he let us go on, having taken our word for all, 
 and not opened a single bag or box. " Fraulein ! " 
 said I, " did you tell that man you had no sausages in 
 your basket ? " I knowing that she had at least six. 
 
 " no, my lady, I did not make lie, I make diplo- 
 matique. He say, ' Have you meat or sausage ? ' and I 
 say, ' No, I have no meat ! ' " 
 
 Then we brought up at the Cologne Hof. Quite 
 cheery looked the hall, well lit up. Down went valise 
 and hat-box, and we stepped in, glad of a roof. " All 
 full ! all fall ! " cried the landlord, running out from 
 the dining-room, u not a single room ! " 
 
 Then rose a great babble of the porters and waiters, 
 and each said the name of a different house to which 
 we would better go. English advocate, who could n't 
 speak a word of G-erman, — by the way, I don't know 
 
2 82 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 how he had been getting on, — said we would go to 
 the nearest, good or bad. TJp and down, in and out, 
 round and about, we went, full half a mile, and reached 
 the Breidenbacher Hof, got in, and got rooms and got 
 to bed. 
 
 " Call us at six ; we go on board the boat for Arn- 
 heim at eight," said I. 
 
 it There is no boat in the morning," said the porter. 
 
 " There must be," said I, remembering the forehead 
 of the old man in Cologne. 
 
 Porter was obstinate, knew there was no boat ; the 
 boat for Arnheim went at 11 p. m. every night. Then 
 I ordered a commissioner to go to the office and see. 
 In an hour he came back with the same story ; still I 
 did not believe, but I went to bed quite unhappy at 
 the prospect of a long car ride the next day, and the 
 thought of having been swindled by the big benevo- 
 lence. At six and a half next morning I rang for 
 water. Waiter says, with the air of one having an 
 unimportant second thought, " 0, there is a boat 
 down this morning at half past eight, the porter says." 
 Thinking the impressions of the employees of the 
 Breidenbacher Hof quite too vacillating to be de- 
 pended on, I pack poor Fraulein off in the cold twi- 
 light, down to the wharf, to ask. She comes back, 
 pops her head in at my door, " Yes, my lady, he go," 
 and is off again on some other mysterious errand of 
 her own. 
 
 At breakfast comes the bill, presented by a pale, mel- 
 ancholy young man who spoke excellent English, (and 
 whom I suspect of being a student at Dusseldorf,) 
 with item of ten silver groschen for the services of com- 
 missioner. Would n't you have liked to have heard 
 the English with which I declined paying for the 
 services of the commissioner who had informed me 
 that there was no boat that morning ? Pale young 
 man smiled a sickly smile, but struck off the item. I 
 left a word of farewell and thanks to the voluble Mrs. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 283 
 
 Advocate, and gave her my London address, and once 
 more poor Fraulein (who began to look a little fagged 
 by her new worries) and I took up our line of march. 
 This boat proved not to be a boat for Arnheim at all, 
 but direct for Rotterdam by way of Nimwegen. Much 
 I fear that Big Benevolence did not know it would be 
 at Dusseldorf on Wednesday morning. However, the 
 tickets were as good on it as on any other, and we 
 need not go off it at all, and we shall be in Rotterdam 
 at half past one. So all is well that ends well. If I 
 had my big trunk I should be content. But if you 
 could once imagine how cold it is. A drizzling rain 
 and a cold wind and no fire. Last night the Fraulein 
 and I slept on mattresses in the captain's cabin. We, 
 being the only women on board, had it to ourselves. 
 I wore all my clothes which are not black, my woollen 
 wrapper, a heavy cloth sack trimmed with astrachan, 
 and I had three blankets above me. Now I have a 
 jug of hot water at my feet, and two blankets rolled 
 around me to the knees, and am just comfortable, ex- 
 cept my hands, which are icy cold in spite of all I can 
 do. I see Holland going by in oval strips through the 
 three cabin windows opposite me. It is chiefly wind- 
 mills, and the ships look like Chinese junks. Every 
 few minutes we pass small steamers towing five and 
 six of them up stream. The outer cabin had six 
 Dutchmen in it, all smoking like furnaces. So I have 
 coaxed the conductor to let me stay in his cabin, and 
 he is writing away at his round table on invoices, etc. 
 Last night I had the washbowl, pitcher, etc., on the 
 same table, and this morning he had to come in to get 
 at his books before I had finished washing my hands. 
 He only knows two English words, " all right," and 
 he says them whenever he comes in or goes out, and 
 pulls off his shiny black silk cap and bows to me. He 
 cannot imagine what I am writing. The Fraulein told 
 him her lady would recommend his boat everywhere, 
 and so I do. All of you remember that if you want 
 
£ g 4 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 to get from Rotterdam up the Rhine, you will do best 
 to take the Netherlands line, not the Cologne and Dus- 
 seldorf. Such good things to eat as we have had for 
 this day and a half, such clean sheets and blankets to 
 sleep in, and such kind and pleasant service, I have not 
 seen since we left Munich. Last night the waiter 
 brought in a light for us to burn all night, lest we 
 might be afraid. Such a contrivance as it was ! A 
 tumbler half full of oil, floating on it a thing made of 
 three round bits of cork, and in the middle what looked 
 like a thin white wafer with a bit of candle-wick in it; 
 and burn, burn, burn, it burned all night, with a queer 
 little glimmer which only showed how dark the cabin 
 was. Whenever I half waked up and saw it I said, 
 " Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you 
 are ! " and dozed off again, thinking of Alice in Wonder 
 Land. By the way, did I tell you — you who know that 
 delicious book — that " Lewis Carroll " is a woman, quite 
 young, who never wrote anything else but " Alice " ? 
 
 Rotterdam, Friday Morning. — I suppose there must 
 be some reason why it is best that I should not see the 
 Hague, as I had intended to do to-day ; but I must 
 own I was in a rebellious frame of mind to find, when 
 I waked up this morning, solid sheets of rain pouring 
 down. As if there were not water enough in Rotter- 
 dam ! _ So there is nothing to do but wait quietly for 
 my ship for London to-morrow morning. Poor Frau- 
 lein is the picture of woe. She has read all her maga- 
 zines, and now has fallen back on an old almanac which 
 she borrowed of the waiter. To sit still is as great a 
 misery for her as if she were five years old instead 
 of fifty-two, and she is so near-sighted that she 
 cannot amuse herself by looking out of the windows as 
 I do. 
 
 These Dutch women are the drollest figures I have 
 seen yet. They are running back and forth in this rain 
 with white fluted caps on their heads, and white wooden 
 shoes turned up at the toes like Chinese junks, — just 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 285 
 
 such as the poorest peasants wear in the Tyrol in wet 
 weather. And such scrubbing as goes on in the morn- 
 ing here, never did I see ! Opposite my windows — in 
 all the rain — a woman with pails and pails and pails of 
 water, and a broom, and a mop, and cloths, scrubbing 
 the sidewalks and the doorstep for two whole hours ! 
 0, if I were an artist, would I not have made a picture, 
 " A Wet Morning in Rotterdam," — the shop door and 
 the windows, and this woman flooding the sidewalk 
 with water, and scouring away with her mop, and 
 all the time the rain pouring down on her fluted cap 
 and into her wooden shoes ! 
 
 Now I go out in a close carriage to see Rotterdam. 
 It is too bad* so much I should have enjoyed running 
 up to the Hague this morning, and loafing in these 
 streets this afternoon ! I must be forgiven for this one 
 little grumble. Poor Fraulein is fast asleep on the sofa. 
 She looks much older when she is asleep, I see. When 
 she is awake, and her eyes and her dimples at work, 
 nobody would think her over forty. When she came 
 in yesterday, she said, " my lady, what think you a 
 man said on me ? When I go on the post-office for 
 your letter, five men they sit by table to play cards, 
 and each man he have — so, in his mouth, (making one 
 very big cheek with her tongue, to indicate a tobacco 
 plug !) and one man he say, ' Dunderwetter, but that 
 wife is fat ! ' and I make my eyes not to right, not to 
 left, as if I nothing hear, but I feel my get very red in 
 the face!" 
 
 Never have I seen any human being with such talent 
 for mimicry as this Fraulein. On the stage she would 
 have made her fortune. I have laughed more in these 
 seven days' journeying with her than in the whole last 
 year put together. There is no human thing she cannot 
 become in one second. The changes in her face, when 
 she is telling a story, sometimes almost frighten me. 
 Last night she told me about an interview with a priest ; 
 and the sanctimonious priestly face that she lengthened 
 
286 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 out into in one second, and the drawl and whine, were 
 such as I never have seen outdone on any stage. 
 
 Farewell, now, my dear souls, till I get to London. 
 
 Evening. — But I must tell you a little about my day. 
 The first thing to be done was to get some money. 
 Mons. Ezekiels was the prophetic name on my letter 
 of credit. Were the banking-houses open all day ? 
 
 "Oyes; all day." 
 
 the things that people don't know about their own 
 city ! I wonder a dozen times a month if I should lie 
 so, in giving a stranger information about New York. 
 I suppose I should. 
 
 Well, to Ezekiels we went. To get anywhere in 
 Rotterdam you drive a long way up one side of a canal, 
 till you come to a bridge that has n't a ship going 
 through, and then, after you have crossed that bridge, 
 you drive a long way down the other side of the canal, 
 and through a narrow lane out on the banks of another 
 canal, and cross that, and then you cross the first canal 
 once or twice more, and drive up and down on the 
 shores of the second, and then you get there ! This is 
 the way it looks. I suppose the canals and lanes really 
 are far apart from each other, and called by different 
 names, but they all feel alike, and you can see your 
 face in every bit of window-glass or door-bell along 
 the way. There is n't any place left for godliness next 
 to cleanliness in Rotterdam, I am sure ; cleanliness has 
 taken all the room ! 
 
 A long, low, stone-paved, stone-arched passage-way 
 led to Ezekiels's counting-room at the back of his house ; 
 his cellar and kitchen were on the same floor ; a woman 
 in wooden shoes was scrubbing his floor; and such 
 shining pans and kettles filled his kitchen, they al- 
 most lit the stone gallery. No Ezekiels! Loquitur, 
 young man with a yard of Jew nose, "All banking- 
 houses in Rotterdam shut from twelve till three ! " 
 
 So I drove off. Saw old Admiral de Witt in stone 
 in the St. Lawrence Church, and the funny high seats 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 287 
 
 with tent-roofs over them, where the burgomasters sit 
 of a Sunday; bought some photographs; saw statue 
 of Erasmus; and back again to the Jew's. -Five Jew 
 noses all turned and pointed at me as I went in. "I 
 will take gold,' - 1 said. " 0, we have no gold ; we will 
 give you good Dutch currency." " But I am going to 
 England. I do not want Dutch currency." All five of the 
 Jew noses sniffed at the idea of a benighted individual's 
 preferring gold to Dutch currency, and the young man 
 said, " You can get it changed for gold on the Boom- 
 pjes." (Wish you all joy pronouncing that word.) So 
 I patiently took my bundle of flabby Dutch currency, 
 and bowed to all five of the Jew noses, and drove off, 
 up and down half a dozen more alternating strips of 
 canal and street, and found another Jew who gave me 
 gold for my paper. This is the first banking-house in 
 which I have had to do such a clumsy and absurd 
 thing. 
 
 Now all is packed and strapped and ready for the 
 morrow. I have a big ache at leaving my great Frau- 
 lein. I shall feel like a swallow pushed out of the nest 
 to fly alone. 
 
 On hoard steamer, nine o'clock, a. m., Saturday, 
 October 11. — Lest I forget some of the scenes of the 
 last half-hour, I have taken out my pen and inkstand 
 and paper (to the stewardess's great surprise), and 
 while the boat only rocks a little, I shall try to tell you 
 what sort of a time we have had. Dear Fraulein's 
 train for Cologne was to start at eight o'clock this 
 morning, the boat for London not till nine. 
 
 " my dear lady, could you not go on board at 
 half past seven, that I see you all comfortable before I 
 go?" So, to please her, I ordered breakfast at half past 
 six, and down to the boat we came at seven. A more 
 surprised stewardess was never seen, nor a darker, 
 colder den than the ladies' cabin. However, I saw the 
 wisdom of the Fraulein's plan in the increased respect 
 of the stewardess's manner. She stood by with wide 
 
2 88 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 eyes to see the great splendid Fraulein crying and kiss- 
 ing my hands. Really I have not had such a parting 
 for years. I did not know the good soul had so taken 
 me to heart. 
 
 After she went off the boat, the stewardess was over- 
 whelmingly polite, much more than she would have 
 ordinarily been to a lady as went "hout by 'erself." 
 But the Fraulein told her that she had come all the 
 way from Munich to bring me, and that my friends 
 were to meet me in London, and so she thinks I am 
 " quality " ; and would I 'ave this berth or that ? This 
 one would "perhaps 'ave too much hair" for me. 
 (" The best one I could go into," thinks I to myself.) 
 
 At last I persuaded her to let me have a stateroom 
 in the gentlemen's cabin, out of which the den called 
 ladies' cabin opens, and not a stateroom in it ! Think 
 of that, woman's rights people ! So I am to pay for 
 two berths, and for once in my life count as good as 
 two men ! 
 
 " Who are you, who are you, I should like to know? " 
 screamed out a great gray parrot in a cage above the 
 table. Then a canary-bird, in another cage, set up the 
 shrillest sort of song before I could reply to the parrot, 
 and " Can't you speak, — don't you know your name ? " 
 said the parrot ; "I'm pretty Poll, — pretty Poll ; 
 what 's your name ? " 
 
 " Well," thought I, " you 're very funny for once, but 
 eighteen hours of you will be quite too much," and I 
 curled myself up on a sofa, and rolled my feet up in a 
 blanket, and thought I would take a nap before the 
 boat started. The steward and clerk and stewardess 
 were eating their breakfast in the outer cabin, and 
 looking at me through the open door. 
 
 " Dirty weather," said the steward. 
 
 "Yes, beastly," said the stewardess, "but the cap- 
 tain says there 's no use waiting; it won't be any 
 better to-morrow." 
 
 This was cheerful. I, in my innocence, thought it 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2 8 9 
 
 only a quiet drizzle, but I see it is going to be another 
 affair when we get outside. 
 
 Presently I heard the gayest little bird-laugh in the 
 cabin, and " Dear mamma, let me come with you." 
 " No, dear, stay there till I come back " ; and a tall, 
 fair English lady came into the cabin, looking for her 
 berths. She had a sweet voice and face, and the little 
 girl's voice was like a bird's. In a few moments more 
 the little thing came tripping in. Such a head of curls, 
 and such gray eyes, and such a jolly little straw hat 
 tipped on one side of her head ! I involuntarily ex- 
 claimed, " you dear little lady ! " She skipped along, 
 laughing, and took no notice of me. 
 
 " Do you like the steamboat ? " said I, as she ran 
 about, looking into every corner. 
 
 " Yes," said she, quite shortly, and then, turning back 
 suddenly, she said, " How dare you look out that way ! " 
 I could not imagine what she meant, and I said, "I 
 don't understand you ; look out what way ? " 
 
 "Why, at we," she said; "you shouldn't stare. I 
 hate staring people." 
 
 Fancy me! I laughed till the tears rolled, and then 
 I said : " I '11 tell you why I stared so. It is because 
 I love little children so much. When I see a little boy 
 or girl coming, I can't help looking at them. Is n't 
 that a good reason ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said, reflectively, looking a little appeased, 
 " but I hate staring people." 
 
 However, she came up close to me presently, and put 
 her little cold paws on mine, and said, pointing to my 
 bag and bundle, which were at my feet, " You can't 
 have those in here ; it is not allowed, I am quite sure." 
 
 "Omy! " said I; " how old are you ? " 
 
 " Three and a quarter," said she, dancing off and 
 laughing. Then she grew quite friendly, and invited 
 me to go with her and look at the little bed in their 
 corner ; and then her mamma bundled her up, and 
 took her on deck, for it has stopped raining, and for 
 
 13 8 
 
290 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 people who have not horrible colds that is the best 
 place. 
 
 Then came a stir at the door, and a man appeared 
 bringing in his arms a girl, perhaps twenty years old, 
 with the most glorious auburn hair I ever saw. Two 
 other girls followed with pillows and bundles, and all 
 the paraphernalia of an invalid. 0, such a terrible time 
 as it was to get her into the narrow berth ! There was 
 evidently a mystery about it all. One sister whispered 
 to the stewardess, who grew frightened-looking at 
 once, and the other sister held the invalid's hands, and 
 a fearful instinct seized me that the girl was insane. 
 How I pitied the poor elder sister who had her in 
 charge ! I never saw a difficult place better filled. 
 There is a gentleman with them, who is either brother 
 or doctor, I cannot make out which. They are G-er- 
 mans, but speak English perfectly. She is quiet, but 
 looks wildly about from time to time. Then' came in a 
 great sofa, which they are carrying about with them, and 
 then a trunk, which must be there too, and the whole 
 cabin hardly big enough to turn round in. How that 
 elder girl did manage the stewardess, and how I did 
 thank my stars that I had secured a stateroom in the 
 outer cabin ! Next were produced from the trunk 
 three long narrow black bags, like umbrella cages, and 
 " Has the ice been brought on board ? " said they. 
 " yes, mum, the hice is 'ere," said the stewardess. 
 
 " Well, these bags are for sea-sickness, to prevent 
 sea-sickness, to be applied to Hie spine," said the 
 elder young lady, and then followed the drollest sort 
 of a discussion between the stewardess . and her. I 
 had to put my veil over my face. 
 
 " Well, mum, I '11 put the hice in, but the screwing 
 up part of it you Tl 'ave to do yourself; and if you all 
 gets bad to once, I don't know who '11 be a puttin' of 
 these 'ere to your speings." 
 
 Then came in a pretty German woman, with a nurse 
 and baby, and, " Stewardess, if I am sick, will you 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 20/ i 
 
 just take my baby a little ; and a few drops of this in 
 the bottle if he is hungry." 
 
 At this crisis I picked myself out and came away. 
 The stewardess put my bag and shawl in my stateroom, 
 and I said to her, " I fear you are going to have a terrible 
 night, stewardess, with the sick lady and the baby." 
 
 " Well, mum, you may well say so, and / am to feed 
 the baby, you know, while the nurse keeps quiet in her 
 berth," with a toss of her head ; " it 's more than 'uman 
 nature can bear sometimes, is it, in these ships, mum, 
 and the poor young lady is not right in her 'ead, and 
 it 's such nasty weather." 
 
 Luckily there are only two other ladies in the cabin 
 besides those I have named, but I do not see ... . 
 
 London, Monday, 18th. — In less than an hour after 
 that last sentence, I was the sickest mortal you ever saw. 
 Heaven forbid that I should tell you the horrors of that 
 voyage ! From twelve o'clock Saturday noon till twelve 
 o'clock Sunday noon, I lay in my berth in a condition 
 of which I never even conceived. Never but once have 
 they known so rough a passage. There was no real 
 danger, they said, but the misery ! Now, at last, I 
 know what sea-sickness means. Except that the cap- 
 tain said it never could be so bad on the Atlantic Ocean, 
 I would never come home. The channel boils all ways 
 at once. You are lifted endwise, sidewise, and whopped 
 over in a second. For six hours every wave hit the 
 boat like an iron wall, and broke over it ; the winds 
 howled like devils ; and the sailors' cries sounded like 
 the wails of lost spirits ; and till eleven o'clock at night 
 that fiendish parrot never stopped its silly screeching ! 
 
 At one o'clock, Sunday noon, I landed; at three I 
 
 was eating cold mutton and drinking ale in the E s's 
 
 pleasant parlor, and had forgotten all about the sea- 
 sickness, so like a miracle does it pass off. Then in the 
 
 evening came darling S C and stayed . till 
 
 eleven o'clock. Think of the good luck of my just 
 catching her ! She and Miss F go to Paris to-day. 
 
29 2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 It is so dark I can but just see at this writing, — about 
 two in the afternoon. Howie, the dear little fellow. 
 says, " 0, this is nothing ! You should have seen the 
 fog last week. They lit candles at twelve of the noon." 
 
 Now, London ! It looks well ; all but weather, and 
 that I knew I could not get. I have a lovely little par- 
 lor and bedroom, and the E s also have a parlor 
 
 and two bedrooms, and we are to buy our beef and 
 mutton, and the landlady has it cooked. 
 
 " Economical Funeral " was one of the first signs 
 I saw yesterday, as I drove up from the boat ! 
 
 Fifteen letters awaited me here ! Bless you, all who 
 wrote. Good by. Peace be with you. 
 
 P. S. — Particulars of the eclipse next time. It is n't 
 quite so dark as I thought it would be. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 2 93 
 
 Great Malvern, December 13, 1869. 
 
 DEAR PEOPLE: How shall I make my tale of 
 bricks this time, having come away from all sorts 
 of straw ? But you will none of you believe me if I 
 say there is nothing to write about in Malvern ; and 
 you will all of you be vexed with me if I send you, for 
 once, a short letter. It has just dawned upon me that 
 I have spoiled you horribly in this one year. It is 
 high time I left off my monthly sermon. I know just 
 how the ministers feel on Friday : I see the fifteenth 
 standing and staring me in the face just like a Sunday, 
 and for the life of me I can't, as the children say, 
 " think of anything to say ! " But now, as I go on, 
 a misgiving seizes me that I am the one who is 
 spoiled after all, thinking that there is nothing worth 
 telling you about because I am not up to my ears in 
 sights of the technical order. Yes, I am the one who 
 is spoiled, and I am ashamed of myself — here in this 
 lovely, quiet, green English country, and on such a 
 hillside as you may look America through for and not 
 find — to have said there was nothing to tell you. 
 
 To tell the truth, I have just come to you from read- 
 ing the saga of Grettir the Strong, translated by dear, 
 delicious William Morris; and somehow to-day the 
 simply being alive, and not killing anybody, nor sailing 
 across any sea, seems not worth speaking about, unless 
 there were Morris and Magnussen to tell it in fashion 
 of sagas. 
 
 Well, now I '11 go and get the Malvern Guide, and 
 see what it says about Malvern. I hate to leave my 
 fire a minute, and I don't know where the book is ; but 
 it is somewhere about the house, and unless I have that 
 
294 
 
 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 open before me, I shall be sure to tell some lie or other 
 about " . . . . feet above the sea," etc. 
 
 " Malvern, so interesting to the geologist, lover of 
 nature, botanist, and antiquarian, possesses unique and 
 attractive historical reminiscences. In ancient medi- 
 aeval, as well as modern times, the tall brow of its bard- 
 hill was an object of much interest." " The town of 
 Malvern strangely contrasts with that vulgar succession 
 of streets, courts, alleys, etc., that are usually so denom- 
 inated. In place of streets it has a succession of fashion- 
 able mansions ; in place of courts and alleys it has vil- 
 las, crescents, and terraces ; and, though town in fact, it 
 is little like one in external aspect. It has few build- 
 ings consecutively joined together, and consists chiefly 
 of separate and distinct residences." 
 
 There are one hundred and seventy-two pages of 
 this, my people ! Think of my having thoughtlessly 
 said there was nothing to be told about Malvern, 
 and yet this valuable work had been lying for two 
 weeks on my table. I am more than ever impressed by 
 the style of it, as I look it over with a view of making 
 quotations. Some slight ambiguities I observe, here and 
 there, owing to the size of the words, which appear to 
 overlap each other a little. For instance, to a practical 
 mind it might occur that it would be troublesome get- 
 ting about in a town where there were no streets, and 
 only "a succession of fashionable mansions." But sleighs 
 drawn by reindeer, after the pattern of that in which 
 Darley drew St. Nicholas, glide without difficulty over 
 the chimney-tops ; and for pedestrian excursions stilts, 
 made by the boot-maker of Jack's giant, enable us to 
 step over the " villas and residences " which obstruct 
 our way. 
 
 " Another feature that greatly distinguishes the cli- 
 mate of Malvern is the perfect dryness and elasticity 
 of the air." 
 
 Here the ambiguity which characterizes the style of 
 the author of the Malvern G-uide seems really, though 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 295 
 
 I shrink from saying anything harsh, to ran into some- 
 thing which is usually called by a severer name. I have 
 only been in the town three weeks, to be sure, so per- 
 haps my observations are too limited to be set against 
 his ; but it is fourteen days now since we have seen the 
 sun, except for one half-hour day before yesterday, and 
 another this morning. On all those fourteen days the 
 whole county of Worcestershire, which lies spread out 
 in a beautiful meadow map below Malvern, has been 
 wrapped in impenetrable fogs, which much of the time 
 have climbed the hill, walling our house in with a dead- 
 white sort of ground-glass-looking substance, which 
 has slowly oozed and trickled and drizzled down on the 
 tops of our umbrellas, without which we have never 
 been out. Had enough guide-book ? Then I '11 tell 
 you why we came, and when. 
 
 We came up on the 22d November, five days after I 
 mailed my last letter to you. That was the when. And 
 the why ? Because we were persuaded that if we were 
 only once well washed in our lives we should become 
 as little children. 
 
 I came on ahead by a few hours and looked up lodg- 
 ings. Ah, my people, don't believe one word you hear 
 written or said against " lodgings " ! It is the ideal 
 way of living, and England is the country of comfort. 
 If I were to set forth, in as glowing language as I 
 might, how comfortable we are, you would all say, " 0, 
 that is only her enthusiastic way of describing things ; 
 it can't be as she says!" But listen now to naked 
 facts. 
 
 We are in one of the houses in Malvern, but whether 
 it is a "mansion" or a "villa" or a u residence," I 
 don't know. It is called, however, '"' Holyrood House." 
 So perhaps it is something grander than any of those 
 three other kinds. At any rate, it is n't a " crescent" 
 or a " terrace." I am sure of that. Holyrood House 
 is kept by Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who have been, I 
 think, chief butler and housekeeper in some noble 
 
296 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER 
 
 family in days gone by. There are five apartments in 
 it; that is, there are five sitting-rooms, with bed- 
 rooms to match, — some with one, some with two. 
 
 I pay for a nice little parlor and bedroom, and a 
 blazing coal-fire all day in each, twenty-eight shil- 
 lings a week ($7 in gold). Think of that, ye un- 
 fortunate New-Yorkers, who could n't get a back-stoop 
 
 in Sixth Avenue for that money. The E s have a 
 
 parlor and two bedrooms on the same floor for ten 
 shillings more. 
 
 We pay three shillings and sixpence for the kitchen 
 fire ; we pay one shilling a week for the hall gas. 
 Then we buy what we want to eat, and Mrs. Brown 
 cooks it for us ; and we have our own private table 
 and especial housekeeping and undisturbed life, just as 
 safe and secure as if we were in a great house all to 
 ourselves, with five servants. We pay for the washing 
 of each thing we use, table and bedroom linen ; so we 
 can have all we like. The service is admirable. 
 the quiet and order and gentleness of these English 
 servants ! It is as good as soothing-syrup to tired 
 nerves to see them moving about. The china and 
 silver are all not only good, but nice and pretty and 
 abundant, We can have three or four friends to tea 
 as satisfactorily as in our own house, and thus far it 
 has never cost us over one pound a week each for the 
 living, aside from the rent. 
 
 How in the world the down-stairs part of it is man- 
 aged, I cannot imagine. Why we don't eat Dr. Mau- 
 prat's butter, and the Rev. Mr. Dickey does n't get our 
 herring, is a mystery to me. But Mrs. Brown says I 
 may go down stairs some day, and see her pantry, 
 and then I shall understand. She has shelves numbered 
 with the numbers of the rooms, and our cold mutton is 
 always set in our corner, above our sugar, and below 
 our bread and carrots. When I get the exact run of it, 
 I shall write an article for the Independent about the 
 system, in the wild, baseless hope of setting somebody 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 297 
 
 to do likewise in America. Think of the contrast be- 
 tween the privacy, comfort, and economy of such an 
 arrangement as this, and the dens of high-priced misery 
 called boarding-houses, in New York or Boston. It is 
 a bewildering thing that we in America, with every 
 facility for being more comfortable than any other 
 nation in the world, should be less so in this one mat- 
 ter of living. If into these comfortable, well-ordered 
 English lodging-houses could be brought our Indian 
 corn, our oysters, our squashes, our poultry, our toma- 
 toes, our apples, our cracked wheat, and if through 
 their great clean windows could shine our sun, life, so 
 far as the body goes, would be perfect. I remember, 
 before I came abroad, I used every now and then to 
 read in the papers a despairing wail from somebody or 
 other about the superiority of the foreign methods of 
 living in apartments in comparison with boarding, but 
 I never quite believed it. I thought there would prove 
 to be a screw loose somewhere when I came to try it ; 
 and so there is, for that matter, when it is in Rome that 
 you do it, and have to have your dinner come in on a 
 man's head, from a horrible " trattoria." It is not abso- 
 lute perfection, either, in Munich, even in my beloved 
 Fraulein's house, where, do her best, she cannot be 
 other than a German cook. I believe it is only in old 
 England that the climax of success is reached ; and, 
 my people, you should taste the mutton ! Can't you 
 believe that a sheep that had eaten purple thyme 
 steadily for four months would taste marvellously well 
 at the end of that time ? I have seen as good roast 
 beef in America as can be bought here, say what they 
 will about their national dish ; but mutton ! Give up ! 
 We never tasted it in America. I did not know what 
 it could be. And they broil it, too, friends, if it is 
 in the shape of a chop you have it. Even in the little 
 inns in out-of-the-way places, where you stop for a 
 lunch, your chop is broiled, and your plate is hot. A 
 fried chop on a cold plate, — that perpetual insult, that 
 13* 
 
298 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 unchristian outrage, which pursues the traveller in New 
 ^England, from Monday morning till Saturday night, — 
 it would make an English landlord stand still in wonder 
 to see. 
 
 A week ago last Friday we drove over to a lovely 
 little village eight miles from Malvern, went to the 
 village church, roamed about the graveyard, and dined 
 at the inn. From the outside of it we felt misgiving, 
 it was so very small and humble. The whole village 
 street had not more than twenty houses, and they were 
 the houses of laborers. Our dinner was laid in the one 
 room beside the kitchen, — bare wooden floor, wooden 
 settle, wooden chairs, old cherry sideboard, tiny little 
 windows high up in the wall ; but the landlord pinned 
 on a white napkin to wait on us, and served us with 
 the ease of an old butler, — broiled chops, broiled bacon, 
 potatoes white and mealy to the point of crumbling, 
 good bread, delicious butter, home-brewed ale, and a 
 hot apple-tart, whose crust would not have dishonored 
 any table, and whose .flavor of lemon and mace might 
 well be remembered among the apple-tarts of one's 
 youth. 0, how we abused our native land round that 
 table, when the landlord was out of the room ! how 
 we said to each other, " Fancy the dinner we should 
 have had in any New England town no larger than 
 this, — the soggy potatoes, the saleratus bread, the 
 pickles, the doughnuts, and the gravy ! Who will head 
 a subscription for Blot's lectures to be delivered through- 
 out the land, and the governors to compel all heads of 
 families to attend ? Who will lift up her voice, or his, 
 and write, write, write in all newspapers till we have 
 better things to eat ? Now slavery is no more, we 
 might be free from dyspepsia ! " So we said ; and then 
 we went over to call at the vicar's house, he having 
 politely asked us to lunch with him, fearing we might 
 not be well fed at the inn ; and we found him a pale, 
 sickly, dyspeptic-looking man, just having taken a 
 wishy cup of tea, and an egg, and some dark-looking 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 2gg 
 
 bread and white butter. Were n't we glad we did n't 
 accept his invitation to lunch, if his page did have 1 733 
 buttons on the front of his body ? 
 
 But I have run on in a way befitting " gluttons and 
 wine-bibbers." You would not wonder, however, if 
 you knew what it was 'to come into luxurious eating 
 and drinking after having lived a year on old stones 
 and oil paint. I think I shall not escape for some 
 months from a perpetual sort of undercurrent of con- 
 sciousness, like a refrain to a song which won't get out 
 of one's head, " Beef, mutton, oatmeal, oatmeal, mut- 
 ton, beef"; and as for the fires, I shall spend half 
 my time, till spring, poking them to see the flames 
 
 Shoot Up. 
 
 Now I will tell you a little of the routine of the 
 life of a water-cure patient; a water-cure impatient 
 would be nearer the truth. Life under the water-treat- 
 ment is a series of interruptions, unbuttonings and but- 
 tonings up, and we all know what drove that French- 
 man to suicide. Interruption first is of your morning 
 naps. If one is to be packed in wet sheets for one 
 hour, dress, and walk for fifteen minutes, and then sit 
 still for fifteen minutes, all before a nine-o'clock break- 
 fast, it is plain, to be sure, that quarter before seven is 
 the latest possible minute for beginning. Quarter be- 
 fore seven is an hour and a quarter before light just 
 now, even on this eastern hillside, which gets the first 
 wink of the sun. When Annie, the silent chamber- 
 maid, with a smutty Honiton-lace cap on her head, 
 comes into my room at half past six to make my fire, 
 I always think that something has happened in the way 
 of accident, and that I am being summoned in a hurry. 
 " Annie, what is the matter ? " I said regularly for 
 the first ten days, but now I only groan, "0 Annie ! " 
 This is the only thing I do not like in the water-treat- 
 ment. To be waked up out of sleep has always seemed 
 to me a crowning insult and outrage to Nature. 
 
 Then comes Maria, my good bath- woman, for whom 
 
3 oo ENCYCLICALS OF A TRAVELLER. 
 
 I have already conceived a sentiment nine parts venera- 
 tion and one affection. Of course I can't help loving 
 her a little, she is so kind and energetic in my behalf, 
 so generally good-natured and straightforward, and so 
 sure I shall get to be a giant of strength and health. 
 But, dear me, my love is so put upon by my awe ! 
 This woman, of like passions with myself, and not much 
 older, who comes three times a day into my presence as 
 the representative of a system from which I can no more 
 escape than I can from grim death; authoritative as 
 Dr. G-ully himself; no more mindful of my naked and 
 helpless body than was the mother who bore me when- 
 ever I needed washing or whipping ! — laughing at my 
 screams ; holding her old snail of a watch in her hand, 
 and declaring it is only four minutes when I say it must 
 be ten, — 0, we have very funny times together, Maria 
 and I ! She little dreams how my soul is on its marrow- 
 bones before her. When she says, "Indeed, mum, you 
 mus' n't," I no more think of persisting than if Parlia- 
 ment were at her back ; and when she looks at me re- 
 flectively as she ties on a compress over the " upper 
 stomach " (did you know we had more than one ? 
 I keep forgetting to ask Dr. G-ully if camels have the 
 most, or we) I feel as if her glance reached the inmost 
 secrets of my bosom, and she must know all about the 
 lies I told, and never got found out in, in my infancy. 
 " Maria," said I, u did you ever see two human bodies 
 alike ? " one day when I felt a little sentimental, and 
 was thinking more than ever how she was getting pos- 
 session of me in all this wet and dry scrubbing. " 
 Lor, mum, I s'pose not, for the matter of that, if you 
 looked close. But they 're all alike to me. Not but 
 what I 'd rather rub the fat ones than they that 's all 
 bones," she added, reflectively, with a half-chuckle and 
 sigh, I suppose at the thought of some recent vertebrae 
 that she had scraped her hands over» Fourteen years 
 she has been at it, this faithful soul ; and she has given 
 out and away so much of her own animal heat and 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 301 
 
 electric vital foroe that she is not strong as she was. 
 My own theory is, that half the benefit comes from the 
 splendid rubbing after the baths. It sets every nerve 
 and pore in your skin on to the full gallop of doing their 
 duty. Well, as I say, this getting into a whole or a 
 part "pack " is your morning interruption. Then you 
 turn over, mummy that you are, and look out and 
 watch the dawn, if you are a person of nerves, with 
 the most delicious sense of being under no more respon- 
 sibility about yourself for the next hour than if you 
 were one of the fleecy clouds which are drifting in the 
 wind. If you are of adipose make, you go to sleep 
 again, and at the end of an hour have another inter- 
 ruption, and are ordered into a " shallow, " that is, a 
 long bath-tub with six inches of water in it, — at 65°, if 
 the doctor is merciful; "stone-cold," if he isn't. I 
 have mine at 65°. Into this you are plunged, smoking 
 hot, and for one or two minutes are scrubbed with 
 towels ; then out, and rubbed for ten or fifteen minutes 
 more, till you are " red as a rose is she," by the x author 
 of " Cometh up as a Flower " ! Then you hurry on 
 your clothes, and take a walk of ten or fifteen or thirty 
 minutes before breakfast. This was the one thing I 
 thought I could never do ; " never had been able to," as 
 women always say to the long-suffering doctor, who 
 knows a thousand times better than they do. But al- 
 ready I like it so much that I think I shall never again 
 breakfast on food before I have had a little breakfast on 
 air; I walk, usually on the piazza, — for Holyrood House 
 has a fine piazza on two sides, one looking off eastward 
 over this glorious great valley. There are three ravens 
 which always come at this time, and flap and bustle 
 about in a great bare linden-tree in the garden. They 
 usually arrive about five minutes after I do ; never have 
 missed a morning yet. What they are at, I can't make 
 out, but there is a solemn jollity or jolly solemnity about 
 their behavior that interests me mightily. They would 
 do for Odin's two ravens, " Thought and Memory/' if J 
 
3 o2 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 were bent on romantic sentiment at that hour in the 
 morning. 
 
 At half past twelve, noon, just as I get well under 
 way with my writing, comes second interruption, — 
 Maria's head, peering round the corner of my parlor 
 door, and " If you please, mum." Then it is either 
 " spinal washing," that is, the washing of the whole 
 length of the spine with cold water for four minutes, — 
 the most delicious thing of all, making your brain feel 
 as suddenly fine and clear as if it had been changed in 
 a second from curds to spun glass ; or a " lamp bath," 
 which is, sitting in a wooden chair, rolled up in several 
 hundred-weight of blankets, and a spirit-lamp burning 
 you up from underneath, till you are drenched in per- 
 spiration, and then out into a "shallow " of cold water, 
 and scrubbed and rubbed as in the morning. This is 
 about like a Turkish Bath. 
 
 Or a rose douche, or the inch-and-a-half douche, or 
 the two together ! 
 
 These are infinitely surprising, I cannot say pleasing. 
 I took them but twice ; they did not suit me. These 
 cannot be taken at home. You go to the bath-house, 
 undress in one cupboard, then step into another, which 
 is set with mysterious bars and pulleys and faucets, re- 
 minding one of Nuremberg torture-dungeons. You 
 have to let the thing on yourself, for the bath-woman 
 would get wet if she came in. Perhaps you think you 
 can thereby play possum, and not take the full force of 
 the water. Ha ! there is a small round hole in the wall, 
 between inner and outer cupboard, and there glares, like 
 the palpable eye of Omniscience, the eye of Maria ! 
 "Indeed, mum, you must stay under ! " and back you 
 bob as spry and guilty as if you 'd been caught steal- 
 ing. If you think you know what the real duration of 
 a minute is, you 're mistaken, unless you have had a 
 stream of water an inch and a half in diameter fall on 
 your back and loins for that length of time, and you 
 wanting to "stand from under," and not daring to. 
 
ENCYCLICALS OF A TEA VELLER. 303 
 
 Sitting before a daguerreotype man after you have 
 " assumed an easy and natural expression" is less than 
 nothing to it. Whichever of these or other noon treat- 
 ments you undergo will take, all told, an hour. Then 
 you must walk from half an hour to an hour. Then 
 dinner. Then a little lounging and talking, and then, 
 perhaps, you go to make a call on a friend, and as you 
 are just in the midst of a fine talk, she says, " Now, I 
 know, as you are a patient yourself, you will excuse me, 
 but my bath-woman has come for me to take a foot- 
 bath.'' "Odear!" say you, " then probably my wo- 
 man is at this moment waiting for me." Sure enough 
 it is half past five o'clock, and you are now to sit for 
 twelve minutes in a sitz-bath-tub of water at 65°. and 
 then have a little more scrubbing. Then you dress for 
 the evening, eat a good supper, and by nine o'clock are 
 so sleepy, you wish you had gone to bed immediately 
 after the sitz-bath, and made that second undressing 
 answer. 
 
 ^ This is an average routine of an average patient at 
 the present day under the water-treatment. The old 
 horrors and severities are done away with, unless it may 
 be in some of the German establishments, where tor- 
 tures are still in vogue. Also the diet is no more re- 
 stricted than it ought to be for all Christians in or out 
 of water-treatment. We can eat anything we ought 
 to like, and we do eat. Such hunger as results from 
 it all, and from the electric Malvern air ! We misgive 
 whether a pound a week will feed us much longer. 
 
 We are a little concerned about our Christmas. Our 
 English cronies are going away before that time, and 
 we sha' n't be asked out to dinner, we know. We have 
 bought big boughs of mistletoe to hang up over our 
 doors, and propose to kiss each other under it. It is 
 an uncanny, scrambling-looking thing. I am a little 
 afraid of its spidery shape, but the berries are lovely. 
 If a white currant were to marry a snowberry, their 
 babies would be like these. Now do you know how 
 
S 04 ENCYCLICALS OF A TRA VELLER. 
 
 they look? You see through them, and you don't", 
 they quiver, and yet are firm-planted as the bough it- 
 self; they are uncanny too, like the rest. 
 
 We have thought of putting an advertisement in the 
 newspapers to the following effect : — 
 
 " An intelligent American family would like to spend 
 the Christmas holidays in an English house, where the 
 Christmas customs and festivities will be well observed. 
 ]STo objection to noblemen." 
 
 But I fear it is now too late. Some dear English 
 souls in London want us, but that is too far. So we 
 shall console ourselves by having a plum-pudding, and 
 trying to keep little Howie from realizing that he is all 
 alone for a holiday. Good by. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 Bits of Travel at Home 
 
 By H. H. 
 
 Square i8mo. Cloth, red edges. Price $1.50. 
 
 / " Mrs. Helen Hunt is too well and favorably known to need introduction to 
 American readers- Her poems are among the most thoughtful, vigorous, and 
 truly imaginative this country has produced. She is a poet to the manner born, 
 and something of the poetic touch and quality enters into her prose writings. Her 
 'Bits of Travel,' published years ago, gave charming accounts of places and 
 scenes and experiences in Europe. Her 'Bits of Talk' were full of wise and 
 useful suggestions put in exceedingly felicitous ways; they had the sweetnes* 
 and bloom of life's morning with the insight and practicality of its mid-day. Het 
 other books have each widened her literary reputation. The little volume of ' Bits 
 of Travel at Home ' is in her best vein. It tells something of New England, but 
 is chiefly devoted to California and Colorado. She both describes and paints, and 
 she intersperses her sketches of nature with cha/ming pictures of human life on 
 the frontier and in the new communities springing up there. All through the 
 closely printed book are delicate little bits of description, cropping up like flowers 
 in a meadow, which the reader lingers over, and the reviewer longs to pluck for a 
 bouquet of quotations. It is a charming book for summer reading, and will make 
 many a dull day brighter by its vivacity and beauty. She gives five sunrises from 
 her calendar in Colorado, and closes her volume as follows : ' O emperor, wilt 
 thou not build an eastern wing to thy palace and set thy bed fronting the dawn J 
 And by emperor I mean simply any man to whom it is given to make himself a 
 home ; and by palace I mean any house, however small, in which love dwells and 
 Dn which the sun can shine.' " — N. Y. Express. 
 
 "A charming volume. Those that remember — and who that read the book 
 will forget — the grace, the freshness, the bright, piquant charm of the first Bits, 
 will be glad to have an opportunity to read a new volume by a writer remarkable 
 for her humor, her quaintness, and her pathos. Those that want a thoroughly 
 enjoyable and entirely fascinating book are heartily recommended to this." — Cin- 
 cinnati Times. 
 
 " The descriptions of American scenery in this volume indicate the imagination 
 of a poet, the eye of an acute observer of Nature, the hand of an artist, and the 
 heart of a woman. 
 
 " H. H.'s choice of words is of itself a study of color. Her picturesque diction 
 rivals the skill of the painter, and presents the woods and waters of the Great 
 West with a splendor of illustration that can scarcely be surpassed by the bright- 
 est glow of the canvas. Her intuitions of character are no less keen than her 
 perceptions of Nature." — N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 Our publications are to be had of all Booksellers. When 
 not to be found, send directly to 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 VERSES. 
 
 By H. H. 
 
 A New Enlarged Edition. Square iSmo. Uniform with 
 " Bits of Talk " and " Bits of Travel." Price $1.00. 
 
 "The volume is one which will make H. H. dear to all the lovers of truej 
 |>oetry. Its companionship will be a delight, its nobility of thought and of purpose 
 an inspiration. . . . This new edition comprises not only the former little book 
 with the same modest title, but as many more new poems. . . . The best critics 
 have already assigned to H. H. her high place in our catalogue of authors. She 
 is, without doubt, the most highly intellectual of our female poets. . • . The new 
 poems, while not inferior to the others in point of literary art, have in them more 
 of fervor and of feeling ; more of that lyric sweetness which catches the attention 
 and makes the song sing itself over and over afterwards in the remembering brain. 
 . . . Some of the new poems seem among the noblest H. H. has ever written. 
 They touch the high-water mark of her intellectual power, and are full, besides, oi 
 passionate and tender feeling. Among these is the ' Funeral March.' " — N. Y. 
 Tribtine. 
 
 "A delightful book is the elegant little volume of 'Verses,' by H. H.,-« 
 instinct with the quality of the finest Christian womanhood. . . . Some wives and 
 mothers, growing sedate with losses and cares, will read many of these ' Verses' 
 with a feeling of admiration that is full of tenderness." — Advance. 
 
 " The poems of this lady have taken a place in public estimation perhaps 
 higher than that of any living American poetess. . . . They are the thoughts of 
 a delicate and refined sensibility, which views life through the pure, still atmos- 
 phere of religious fervor, and unites all thought by the tender talisman of love." — 
 Inter-Ocean. 
 
 " Since the days of poor ' L. E. L.,' no woman has sailed into fame under a 
 flag inscribed with her initials only, until the days of ' H. H.' Here, however, 
 the parallelism ceases ; for the fresh, strong beauty which pervades these *' Verses 
 nas nothing in common with the rather languid sweetness of the earlier writer. 
 Unless I am much mistaken, this enlarged volume, double the size of that origi- 
 nally issued, will place its author not merely above all American poetesses and all 
 living English poetesses, but above all women who have ever written poetry in 
 the English language, except Mrs. Browning alone. ' H. H.' has not yet proved 
 herself equal to Mrs. Browning in range of imagination ; but in strength and depth 
 the American writer is quite the equal of the English, and in compactness and 
 Symmetry altogether her superior." — T. W. H. in The Index. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the Pub* 
 
 Ushers 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers 1 Publications. 
 
 BITS OF TALK 
 
 ABOUT HOME MATTERS. 
 
 By H. H. 
 
 Auiuor of " Verses" and " Bits of Travel" Square 
 jSmo. Cloth, red edges. Price, $1.00. 
 
 •* A New Gospel for Mothers. — We wish that e^ery mother In 
 the land would read ' Bits of Talk about Home Matters,' by H. H., and 
 that they would read it thoughtfully. The latter suggestion is, however, 
 wholly unnecessary : the book seizes one's thoughts and sympathies, as 
 only startling truths presented with direct earnestness can do. . . . The 
 adoption of her sentiments would wholly change the atmosphere in many 
 a house to what it ought to be, and bring almost constant sunshine and 
 bliss where now too often are storm and misery." — Lawrence {Kansas) 
 Journal. 
 
 " In the little book entitled '■ Bits of Talk,' by H. H., Messrs. Roberta 
 Brothers have given to the world an uncommonly useful collection of 
 essays, — useful certainly to all parents, and likely to do good to all chil- 
 dren. Other people have doubtless held as correct views on the subjects 
 treated here, though few have ever advanced them ; and none that we are 
 aware have made them so attractive as they are made by H. H.'s crisp 
 and sparkling style. No one opening the book, even though without rea- 
 son for special interest in its topics, could, after a glimpse at its pages, 
 lay it down unread ; and its bright and witty scintillations will fix many a 
 precept and establish many a fact. ' Bits of Talk ' is a book that ouglit 
 to have a place of honor in every household ; for it teaches, not only the 
 true dignity of parentage, but of childhood. As we read it, we laugh and 
 cry with the author, and acknowledge that, since the child is father of 
 the man, in being the champion of childhood, sheis the champion of the 
 whole coming race. Great is the rod, but H. H. is not its prophet 1" — 
 M-s. Harriet Prescott Spofford, in Newburyport Herald. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, by the pub- 
 lishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 Nelly's Silver Mine. 
 
 By H. H. 
 
 With Illustrations. i6mo, cloth. Price #1.50. 
 
 " The sketches of life, especially of its odd and out-of-the-way aspects, by H. H. 
 ilways possess so vivid a reality that they appear more like the actual scenes than 
 any copy by pencil or photograph. They form a series of living pictures, radiant 
 with sunlight and fresh as morning dew. In this new story the fruits of her fine 
 genius are of Colorado growth, and though without the antique flavor of her recol- 
 lections of Rome and Venice, are as delicious to the taste as they are tempting to 
 the eye, and afford a natural feast of exquisite quality." — N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 " This charming little book, written for children's entertainment and instruc- 
 tion,, is equally delightful to the fathers and mothers. It is life in New England, 
 and, the racy history of a long railway journey to the wilds of Colorado. The 
 children are neither imps nor angels, but just such children as are found in every 
 happy home. The pictures are so graphically drawn that we feel well acquainted 
 with Rob and Nelly, have travelled with them and climbed mountains and found 
 silver mines, and know all about the rude life made beautiful by a happy family, 
 and can say of Nelly, with their German neighbor, Mr. Kleesman, 'Ach well, she 
 haf better than any silver mine in her own self.' " — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 'In 'Nelly's Silver Mine' Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson has given us a true 
 classic for the nursery and the school-room, but its readers will not be confined to 
 any locality. Its vivid portraiture of Colorado life and its truth to child-nature 
 give it a charm which the most experienced cannot fail to feel. It will stand by 
 the side of Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld in all the years to come." — Mrs. 
 Caroline H. Dall. 
 
 ' We heartily commend the book for its healthy spirit, its lively narrative, ancJ 
 is freedom from most of the faults of books for children." —Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 Our publications are to be had of all Booksellers. When 
 not to be found, send directly to 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 RAMONA: A Story. 
 
 By HELEN JACKSON (H. H.). 
 
 l2mo Cloth. Price $1.50 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly says of the author that she is "a MtttiHo 
 5n literature," and that the story " is one of the most artistic 
 creations of American literature." Says a lady : "Tome it is the 
 most distinctive piece of work we have had in this country since 
 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and its exquisite fiuish of style is beyond that 
 --lassie " "The book is trulv an American novel," says the Boston 
 Advertiser. " Ramon a is one of the most charming creations of 
 modern fiction," says Charles D Warner- "The romance of the 
 stcy is irresistibly fascii.ating," says The Independent. _ 
 
 " The best novel written by a woman since George Eiiotdied, as 
 it seems to rne, is Mrs. Jackson's ' Ramona.' What action is there ! 
 What motion ! How entrainant it is ! It carries us along as il 
 moanted on a swift horse's back, from beginning to end, and it is 
 anly when we return for a second reading that we can appreciate 
 Ihe fine handling of the characters, and especially the Spanish 
 mother drawn with a stroke as keen and 5rm as that whicft 
 oortrayed George Eliot's ' Dorothea.' »» — T. W. Higgimon. 
 
 Unsolicited tribute of a stranger, a lady in Wisconsin : — 
 
 " I beg leave to thank you with an intense heartiness for your 
 oublic espousal of the cause of the Indian. In your / Century of 
 Dishonor ' vou showed to the country its own disgrace. In 
 'Ramona 'you have dealt most tenderly with the Indians as men 
 and women. You have shown that their stoicism is not indiffer- 
 ence, that their squalor is not always of their own choosing. You 
 have shown the tender grandeur of their love, the endurance of 
 their constancy. While, by ' Ramona,' you have made your name 
 immortal, you have done something which is far greater You are 
 but one: they are many. You have helped those who cannot hep 
 themselves. As a novel, 'Ramona' must stand beside 'Romola,' 
 both as regards literary excellence and the portrayal of life's deepest, 
 most vital," most solemn interests. I think nothing in literature 
 since Goldsmith's ' Vicar of Wakefield ' equals your description of 
 the flight of Ramona and Alessandro. Such delicate pathos and 
 tender joy, such pure conception of life's realities, and such loftiness 
 3f self-abnegating love ! How much richer and happier the world 
 ti with ' Ramona ' in it ! " ^ 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the publishers, 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston 
 
Messrs, Roberts Brothers* Publications, 
 
 SONNETS AND LYRICS. 
 
 By HELEN JACKSON. 
 
 One Volume. Square i6mo. Cloth. Uniform with Mrs. Jackson's 
 "Verses." Price, $1.00. White cloth, gilt, price, $1.25. 
 
 This little irolumfe is instipct with the vitality of the large-hearted and large- 
 niinded woman whose last work it contains. No verse could be further removed 
 from the self-consciousness and artifice of what is sometimes known as the '' art 
 school ; " and, on the other hand, no verse could be more entirely free from the 
 unregulated overflow of emotion. ... It is sound in feeling and in art ; there 
 is a wholesome, healthful tone running through the whole of it, from those earli- 
 est lines published in the " Nation," under the title, so full of meaning to her, 
 "Lifted Over," to that last splendid address to death in "Habeas Corpus," 
 written on one of the last days of her conscious life. ... In the verse contained 
 in this latest volume there is the same full-pulsed love for all things beautiful : 
 for mountains and clouds, for blue skies and wide seas, for the wild-floweirs 
 hidden among the recesses of the rocks, and for the great stars that, for human 
 eyes at least, mark the boundary lines of the universe. There is no aspect of the 
 natural world from which Mrs. Jackson's large and masterful nature turned 
 away with fear or repulsion. Winter stirs her imagination no less than summer, 
 and in a sonnet on " January " she invokes it in lines that are full of deep per- 
 ception of the beauty that lies hidden in its heart. — Christian Union. 
 
 The spirit of the little book in which are brought together the last of her 
 hitherto uncollected pieces is singularly gentle and winning, and it will strengthen 
 the affection in which the memory of " H. H." is cherished by many hearts. -< 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by tht 
 publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston 
 
o 
 
 \899