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DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Co evety, purchaget of wbicb
are algo given away in thig volume
$ir 3plenoio E33ap3
by the game ElutbOt.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE
(AND SIX ESSAYS.)
By wº
JEROME KºjeROME, al-/*"
author of -
“THE IDLE THoughts of AN IDLE FELLOw,” “STAGELAND"
. . “THREE MEN IN A BOAT,” ETC.
tº--ms-,
TÜlitb upwarog of One bunoreo ano Qwenty, 3IIustrations
BY
G. G. FRASER
BRISTOL
J. W. ARRowsMITH, II QUAY STREET
LONDON
Simpkin, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co. LIMITED
M
z (" !
[. | & | I]
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE
* .
C O N T E N T S.
- -
EVERGREENS ©
CLOCKS
TEA-KETTLES ©
A PATHE
t º
Tic story
THE NEW UTOPIA
DREAMS
o
Page.
177
2O3
22I
24I
259
281
lvº avox,
^,i\
SC wºn to
!C-/8 - 27
... / S 4 / 0
P. R. E. F. A C E . . .
Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well
now, why don't you write a sensible book 2 I should like to
see you make people think.”
“Do you believe it can be done, then P” I asked.
“Well, try,” he replied. -
Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want
jou to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind.
In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I
know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play.
I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know
about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you
with knowledge. I wish to teach you gradually. When you
have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell
Jou some more. I should only be defeating my own object did
I, by making you think too much at first, give you a, perhaps,
lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter
in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention
b
V1 PREFACE,
of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice,
as they go on, that they are being instructed ; and I have, there-
fore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable,
that this is either an exceptionally clevey or an exceptionally
useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it.
I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make
you think, if I can. -
What you will think after you have read the book, I do not
want to know ; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be
sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and
to receive a percentage on the gross sales.
LoNDoN, March, 1891.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
(IDonbap, 19th.
My Friend B.-Invitation to the Theatre.—A Most Un-
pleasant Regulation.—Yearnings of the Embryo Traveller.—
How to Make the Most of One's Own Country.—Friday, a
Lucky Day.—The Pilgrimage Decided On.

Y friend B. called on me this morning and
asked me if I would go to a theatre with
him on Monday next.
“Oh, yes! certainly, old man,” I replied. “Have you
got an order, then P’’ -
He said:
“No ; they don't give orders. We shall have to
pay.”
“Pay! Pay to go into a theatre ' " I answered, in
astonishment. “Oh, nonsense ! You are joking.”
“My dear fellow,” he rejoined, “do you think I
should suggest paying if it were possible to get in by any
other means ? But the people who run this theatre
would not even understand what was meant by a ‘free
list,’ the uncivilised barbarians ! It is of no use pretend-
ing to them that you are on the Press, because they
don't want the Press; they don't think anything of the
Press. It is no good writing to the acting manager, be-
cause there is no acting manager. It would be a waste
of time offering to exhibit bills, because they don't have
any bills—not of that sort. If you want to go in to see
8 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
the show, you’ve got to pay. If you don't pay, you stop
outside; that’s their brutal rule.” e
“Dear me,” I said, “what a very unpleasant arrange-
ment And whereabouts is this extraordinary theatre 2
I don’t think I can ever have been inside it.”
“I don’t think you have,” he replied; “it is at Ober-
Ammergau—first turning on the left after you leave
Ober railway-station, fifty miles from Munich.”
“Um 1 rather out of the way for a theatre,” I said.
“I should not have thought an outlying house like that
could have afforded to give itself airs.”
“The house holds seven thousand people,” answered
my friend B., “and money is turned away at each
performance. The first production is on Monday next.
Will you come 2"
I pondered for a moment,
looked at my
l diary, and saw
e.g. “... that Aunt Emma
-’ sº was coming to
*Asº spend Saturday
§% % -
to Wednesday
next with us,
should miss her,
and might not see
her again for years,
and decided that I
would go.
To tell the truth,
it was the journey
more than the play





DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. - 9
that tempted me. To be a great traveller has always been
one of my cherished ambitions. I yearn to be able to
write in this sort of strain :-
“I have smoked my fragrant Havana in the Sunny
streets of old Madrid, and I have puffed the rude and
not sweet-smelling calumet of peace in the draughty
º wigwam of the Wild West;
I have sipped my evening
coffee in the silent tent,
while the tethered camel
browsed without upon the
desert grass, and I have
quaffed the fiery brandy of
the North while the rein-
deer munched his fodder
/2
(~ \º 2 beside me in the hut, and
C =zºº s: the pale light of the mid-
- º * V night Sun threw the sha-
2: º r dows of the pines across
łężº the Snow ; I have felt the
stab of lustrous eyes that,
ghostlike, looked at me from
out veil - covered faces in
Byzantium’s narrow ways,
and I have laughed back
(though it was wrong of me
to do so) at the saucy, wan-
ton glances of the black-eyed
girls of Jedo; I have wan-
dered where “good’—but not
too good—Haroun Alraschid
crept disguised at nightfall,
with his faithful Mesrour by







IO DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
his side; I have stood upon the bridge where Danté
watched the sainted Beatrice pass by ; I have floated
on the waters that once bore the barge of Cleopatra;
I have stood where Caesar fell; I have heard the soft.
rustle of rich, rare robes in the drawing-rooms of
Mayfair, and I have heard the teeth-necklaces rattle
around the ebony throats of the belles of Tongataboo ; I
have panted beneath the sun's fierce rays in India, and
frozen under the icy blasts of Greenland; I have mingled
with the teeming hordes of old Cathay, and, deep in the
great pine forests of the Western World, I have lain,
wrapped in my blanket, a thousand miles beyond the
shores of human life.”
B., to whom I explained my leaning towards this
style of diction, said that exactly the same effect could
be produced by writing about
~ :- _2~~~. T -" r- º
tº: > -º- places quite handy. He
º- 22rs “-2-’
==, said:—
=T “I could go on like that
without having been
outside England at
## all. I should say:
- “‘ I have smoked
my fourpenny Shag
in the sanded bars of
Fleet Street, and I
have puffed my two-
penny Manilla in the
gilded halls of the Cri-
terion; I have quaffed my
foaming beer of Burton
where Islington's famed
Angel gathers the little


DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. - II
thirsty ones beneath her shadowing wings, and I have
sipped my tenpenny ordinaire in many a garlic-scented
salon of Soho. On the back of the strangely-moving ass I
have urged—or, to speak more correctly, the proprietor of
the ass, or his agent, from behind has urged—my wild
career across the Sandy heaths of Hampstead, and my
canoe has startled the screaming wild-fowl from their
lonely haunts amid the sub-tropical regions of Battersea.
Adown the long, steep slope of One Tree Hill have I rolled
from top to foot, while laughing maidens of the East stood
round and clapped their hands and yelled; and, in the old-
world garden of that pleasant Court, where played the fair-
haired children of the ill-starred Stuarts, have I wandered
long through mazy paths, my arm entwined about the
waist of one of Eve's sweet daughters, while her mother
raged around indignantly on the other side of the hedge,
and never seemed to get any nearer to us. I have chased
the lodging-house Norfolk Howard to his watery death
by the pale lamp's light; I have, shivering, followed the
leaping flea o'er many a mile of pillow and sheet, by the
great Atlantic's margin. Round and round, till the heart
—and not only the heart—grows sick, and the mad brain
whirls and reels, have I ridden the small, but extremely
hard, horse, that may, for a penny, be mounted amid the
plains of Peckham Rye ; and high above the heads
of the giddy throngs of Barnet (though it is doubtful if
anyone among them was half so giddy as was I) have I
swung in highly-coloured car, worked by a man with a
rope. I have trod in stately measure the floor of Ken-
sington's Town Hall (the tickets were a guinea each, and
included refreshments — when you could get to them
through the crowd), and on the green sward of the forest
that borders eastern Anglia by the oft-sung town of
I2 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Epping I have performed quaint ceremonies in a ring;
I have mingled with the teeming hordes of Drury Lane
on Boxing Night, and, during the run of a high-class
. piece, I have sat in
lonely grandeur in the
front row of the gallery,
and wished that I had
spent my shilling instead
in the Oriental halls of
the Alhambra.’
“There you are,”
said B., “that is just
as good as yours; and
you can write like that
withoutgoing more than
a few hours' journey
from London.”
- “We will discuss the
‘matter no further,” I replied. “You cannot, I see, enter
into my feelings. The wild heart of the traveller does
not throb within your breast; you cannot understand his
longings. No matter! Suffice it that I will come this
journey with you. I will buy a German conversation
book, and a check-suit, and a blue veil, and a white
umbrella, and suchlike necessities of the English tourist in
Germany, this very afternoon. When do you start 2 ”
“Well,” he said, “it is a good two days’ journey.
I propose to start on Friday.”
“Is not Friday rather an unlucky day to start on ?”
I suggested. • * : * ~ *
“Oh, good gracious !” he retorted quite sharply,
“what rubbish next As if the affairs of Europe were
going to be arranged by Providence according to whether

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I3
you and I start for an excursion on a Thursday or a
Friday !”
He said he was surprised that a man who could be so
sensible, occasionally, as myself, could have patience to
even think of such old-womanish nonsense. He said that
years ago, when he was a silly boy, he used to pay atten-
tion to this foolish superstition himself, and would never,
upon any consideration, start for a trip upon a Friday.
But, one year, he was compelled to do so. It was a
case of either starting on a Friday or not going at all,
and he determined to chance it.
He went, prepared for and expecting a series of acci-
dents and misfortunes. To return home alive was the
only bit of pleasure he hoped for from that trip.
As it turned out, however, he had never had a more
enjoyable holiday in his life before. The whole event was
a tremendous success.
And after that, he had nade up his mind to always start
on a Friday; and he always did, and always had a good
time.
He said that he would never, upon any consideration,
'start for a trip upon any other day but a Friday now. It
was so absurd, this superstition about Friday.
So we agreed to start on the Friday, and I am to
meet him at Victoria Station at a quarter to eight in
the evening.
I4 , DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Churgoap, 22nt).
The Question of Luggage.—First Friend's Suggestion.—
Second Friend's Suggestion.—Third Friend's Suggestion.—
Mrs. Briggs' Advice.—Our Vicar's Advice.—His Wife's
Advice.—Medical Advice.—Literary Advice.—George's Re-
commendation.—My Sister-in-Law's Help.–Young Smith's
Counsel.—My Own Ideas.-B.'s Idea.
question of what luggage to take with me. I met
a man this morning, and he said:
“Oh, if you are going to Ober-Ammergau,
mind you take plenty of warm clothing with you. You'll
need all your winter things up
// Aſ there.”
£º • , He said that a friend of his
& ; 42 had gone up there some years
7 Wº sº ago, and had not taken enough
warm things with him, and had
I have been a good deal worried to-day about the
ſº
**.*.
ſº Q ź
#}} ſº caught a chill there, and had
|# iº come home and died. He said:
#|| \ Yº: $º
%–4 (2 º ºf iſ Nº.
2.
Wºź “You be guided by me, and
| ºff:
& ºź in or
#º% and take plenty of warm things
º
|
g ſº
ſº %
- |
º # , ;
sº.
Zº a ‘ſ. |
º ~
2 : . .
º || with you.”
| º I met another man later on,
§ll||
| #
#! |/|} and he said:
|A “I hear you are going
ºf Tº v abroad. Now, tell me, what
part of Europe are you going
% to ?”










DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I5
I replied that I thought it was somewhere about the
middle. He said:
“Well, now, you take my advice, and get a calico suit
and a sunshade. Never mind the look of the thing. You
be comfortable. You’ve no idea of the heat on the Con-
tinent at this time of the year. English people will
persist in travelling about the Continent in the same
stuffy clothes that they wear at home. That's how so
many of them get sunstrokes, and are ruined for life.”
I went into the club, and there I met a friend of mine
—a newspaper correspondent—who has travelled a good
deal, and knows Europe pretty well. I told him what my
two other friends had said, and asked him which I was to
believe. He said:
“Well, as a matter of fact, they are both right.
You see, up in those hilly districts, the weather changes
very quickly. In the morning it may be blazing hot, and
you will be melting, and in the evening you may be very
glad of a flannel shirt and a fur coat.”
“Why, that is exactly the sort of weather we have in
England " I exclaimed. “If that's all these foreigners
can manage in their own country, what right have they to
come over here, as they do, and grumble about our
weather ?” • .
“Well, as a matter of fact,” he replied, “they haven't
any right; but you can't stop them—they will do it. No,
you take my advice, and be prepared for everything.
Take a cool suit and some thin things, for if it’s hot, and
plenty of warm things in case it is cold.”
When I got home I found Mrs. Briggs there, she hav-
ing looked in to see how the baby was. She said:
“Oh if you’re going anywhere near Germany, you
take a bit of soap with you.” -
2
I6 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
She said that Mr. Briggs had been called over to Ger-
many once in a hurry, on business, and had forgotten to
take a piece of soap with him, and didn’t know enough
German to ask for any when he got over there, and didn't
see any to ask for even if he had known, and was away
for three weeks, and wasn't
able to wash himself all
the time, and came home
so dirty that they didn’t
know him, and mistook
him for the man that was
to come to see what was
the matter with the kitchen
boiler.
Mrs. Briggs also ad-
vised me to take some
towels with me, as they
give you such small towels
to wipe on.
I went out after lunch,
and met our Vicar. He
said:
“Take a blanket with
you.” -
He said that not only did the German hotel-keepers
never give you sufficient bedclothes to keep you warm of
a night, but they never properly aired their sheets. He
said that a young friend of his had gone for a tour through
Germany once, and had slept in a damp bed, and had
caught rheumatic fever, and had come home and died.
His wife joined us at this point. (He was waiting for
her outside a draper's shop when I met him.) He ex-
plained to her that I was going to Germany, and she said;

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 17
“Oh I take a pillow with you. They don't give you
any pillows—not like our pillows—and it's so wretched,
you'll never get a decent night's rest if you don't take a
pillow.” She said: “You can have a little bag made for
it, and it doesn't look anything.”
I met our doctor a few yards further on. He said:
“Don’t forget to take a bottle of brandy with you. It
doesn’t take up much room, and, if you're not used to
German cooking, you’ll find it handy in the night.”
He added that the brandy you got at foreign hotels
was mere poison, and that it was really unsafe to travel
abroad without a bottle of brandy. He said that a simple
thing like a bottle of brandy in your bag might often save
your life. * -
Coming home, I ran against a literary friend of mine.
He said:
“You’ll have a goodish time in the train, old fellow.
Are you used to long railway journeys P’’
I said:
“Well, I’ve travelled down from London into the very
heart of Surrey by a South Eastern express.”
“Oh! that’s a mere nothing, compared with what
you’ve got before you now,” he answered. “Look here,
I’ll tell you a very good idea of how to pass the time.
You take a chessboard with you and a set of men.
You'll thank me for telling you that l”
George dropped in during the evening. He said:
“I’ll tell you one thing you'll have to take with you,
old man, and that’s a box of cigars and some tobacco.”
He said that the German cigar—the better class of
German cigar—was of the brand that is technically known
over here as the “Penny Pickwick—Spring Crop; ” and
he thought that I should not have time, during the short
2 %
I8 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
* stay I contemplated making in the country, to acquire a
º
p
º-
|ii.fº
º°.|
taste for its flavour.
My sister-in-law came in later on in the evening (she
is a thoughtful girl), and brought a box with her about the
size of a tea-
glad of that.
There’s every-
thing there for
* * * -, making yourself
y \}/Sº, "|W a cup of tea.”
#3 | |\\ She said that
ºft * }}|{{\ they did not un-
il º Č Ž ºf t, . "
|ffl|| |||} %| / #/ſ, \\ derstand tea in
& º chest. She said:
aſí. ** j g & & Now, you
é º slip that in your
ſº % bag; you’ll be
ãº
º
|
§ } Germany, but
*a zº” that with that I
should be inde-
pendentofthem.
She opened the case, and explained its contents to me.
It certainly was a wonderfully complete arrangement.
It contained a little caddy full of tea, a little bottle of
milk, a box of sugar, a bottle of methylated spirit, a
box of butter, and a tin of biscuits: also, a stove, a
kettle, a teapot, two cups, two saucers, two plates, two
knives, and two spoons. If there had only been a bed in
it, one need not have bothered about hotels at all.
Young Smith, the Secretary of our Photographic Club,
called at nine to ask me to take him a negative of the
statue of the dying Gladiator in the Munich Sculpture
Gallery. I told him that I should be delighted to oblige






DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I9
him, but that I did not intend to take my camera with
IIl62. &
“Not take your camera !” he said. “You are going
to Germany—to Rhineland l You are going to pass
through some of the most picturesque scenery, and stay
at some of the most ancient and famous towns of Europe,
and are going to leave your photographic apparatus behind
you, and you call yourself an artist !”
He said I should never regret a thing more in my life
than going without that camera.
I think it is always right to take other people's advice
in matters where they know more than you do. It is the
experience of those who have gone before that makes the
way smooth for those who follow. So, after supper, I got
together the things I had been advised to take with
me, and arranged them
on the bed, adding a
few articles I had
thought of all by
myself.
I put up Żºſſ/N}
plenty of writing / ſº
- / lº
paper and a % ºft
º % &
bottle of ink, Nº. tº 3)A'ſ
N º ... gº gº #AS º
e º 'N º º Pºiº ASA ... º:
\\ ... ºº ſºlſ||
few other books § |$g 1,...ſ., , , §§ } | ſ I
º º $S "", "/.., // %lºſº || || || §
of reference, in § hisºft//ft|##| ||Nº||
5 2SA \º m ( Williºğ Ž lºst º; i
case I should | | | | \, \º VI º º inſ*: *
º tº , i lºš ºf Cº iſ "...iſſillſ”
feel inclined to "| sº |
1 & Sºğ jº. -
do any work “Jºž/º
\ | § § tº r -* % zº. If ſº
while I was
away. I always Øſº


























2O DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
like to be prepared for work; one never knows when one
may feel inclined for it. Sometimes, when I have been
away, and have forgotten to bring any paper and pens
and ink with me, I have felt so inclined for writing; and
it has quite upset me that, in consequence of not having
brought any paper and pens and ink with me, I have
been unable to sit down and do a lot of work, but have
been compelled, instead, to lounge about all day with my
hands in my pockets.
Accordingly, I always take plenty of paper and pens
and ink with me now, wherever I go, so that when the
desire for work comes to me I need not check it.
That this craving for work should have troubled me
so often, when I had no paper, pens, and ink by me, and
that it never, by any chance, visits me now, when I am
careful to be in a position to gratify it, is a matter over
which I have often puzzled.
But when it does come I shall be ready for it.
I also put on the bed a few volumes of Goethe, be-
cause I thought it would be so pleasant to read him in
his own country. And I decided to take a sponge, together
with a small portable bath, because a cold bath is so
refreshing the first thing in the morning.
B. came in just as I had got everything into a pile.
He stared at the bed, and asked me what I was doing.
I told him I was packing. -
“Great Heavens!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were
moving! What do youthink we are going to do—camp out?”
“No I " I replied. “But these are the things I have
been advised to take with me. What is the use of people
giving you advice if you don't take it?”
He said:
“Oh! take as much advice as you like; that always
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 2I
comes in useful to give away. But, for goodness sake,
don't get carrying all that stuff about with you. People
will take us for Gipsies.”
I said:
“Now, it’s no use your talking nonsense. Half the
things on this bed are life-preserving things. If people
go into Germany without these things, they come home
and die.” -
And I related to him what the doctor and the vicar
and the other people had told me, and explained to him
how my life depended upon my taking brandy and blan-
kets and sunshades and plenty of warm clothing with
II].62. -
He is a man utterly indifferent to danger and risk—
incurred by other people—is B. He said:
“Oh, rubbish You’re not the sort that catches a
cold and dies young. You leave that co-operative stores
of yours at home, and pack up a tooth-brush, a comb, a
pair of socks, and a shirt. That’s all you’ll want.”
I have packed more than that, but not much. At
all events, I have got everything into one small bag. I
should like to have taken that tea arrangement—it
would have done so nicely to play at shop with in the
train l—but B. would not hear of it.
I hope the weather does not change.
22 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
jríðap, 23ro.
Early Rising.—Ballast should be Stowed Away in the Hold
before Putting to Sea.—Annoying Interference of Providence in
Matters that it Does Not Understand.—A Socialistic Society.—
B. Misjudges Me.—An Uninteresting Anecdote.—We Lay In
Ballast.—A Moderate Sailor.—A Playful Boat.
why I got up early. We do not start till eight
o'clock this evening. But I don't regret it—the
getting up early I mean. It is a change. I got every-
body else up too, and we all had breakfast at seven.
I made a very good lunch. One of those seafaring
men said to me once :
“Now, if ever you are going a short passage, and are
at all nervous, you lay in a good load. It’s a good load
in the hold what steadies the ship. It's them half-empty
cruisers as goes a-rollin' and a-pitchin' and a-heavin’ all
over the place, with their stern up'ards half the time.
You lay in ballast.”
It seemed very reasonable advice.
Aunt Emma came in the afternoon. She said she
was so glad she had caught me. Something told her to
change her mind and come on Friday instead of Saturday.
It was Providence, she said.
I wish Providence would mind its own business, and
not interfere in my affairs: it does not understand them.
| GOT up very early this morning. I do not know
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 23
She says she shall stop till I come back, as she wants
to see me again before she goes. I told her I might not
be back for a month. She said it didn't matter; she
had plenty of time, and would wait for me.
The family entreat me to hurry home.
- ſº
**
ſº
r Ji | § º/?
.#: * 'll aſ tº º
##";
º
C W %. ... }}
3% ºf /ſ.
| & § 3.
t gº sº - º
I ate a very fair dinner—“laid in a good stock of bal-
last,” as my seafaring friend would have said; wished
“Good-bye!” to everybody, and kissed Aunt Emma;
promised to take care of myself—a promise which, please
Heaven, I will faithfully keep, cost me what it may—
hailed a cab and started.

24 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
I reached Victoria some time before B. I secured
two corner seats in a smoking-carriage, and then paced
up and down the platform waiting for him.
When men have nothing else to occupy their minds,
they take to thinking. Having nothing better to do until
B. arrived, I fell to musing.
What a wonderful piece of Social-
ism modern civilisation has become !
—not the Socialism of the so-called
Socialists—a system modelled appa-
rently upon the methods of the con-
vict prison—a system under which
each miserable sinner is to be com-
pelled to labour, like a beast of bur-
den, for no personal benefit to him-
self, but only for the good of the
community—a world where there |ſº
are to be no men, but Only num- &zº ſ º
bers — where there is to be no sº | º
ambition and no hope and no º
fear, but the Socialism of free men, | # W
working side by side in the common
workshop, each one for the wage to
which his skill and energy entitle
him; the Socialism of responsible,
thinking individuals, not of State-
directed automata.
Here was I, in exchange for the result of some of my
labour, going to be taken by Society for a treat, to the
middle of Europe and back. Railway lines had been
laid over the whole 700 or 800 miles to facilitate my
progress; bridges had been built, and tunnels made; an
army of engineers, and guards, and signal-men, and porters,
ºw
ſ
|
º
D
W
|
|



f)f ARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 25
and clerks were waiting to take charge of me, and to see
to my comfort and safety. All I had to do was to tell
Society (here represented by a railway booking-clerk)
where I wanted to go, and to step into a carriage; all the
rest would be done for me. Books and papers had been
written and printed; so that if I wished to beguile the
journey by reading, I could do so. At various places on
the route, thoughtful Society had taken care to be ready
for me with all kinds of refreshment (her sandwiches
might be a little fresher, but maybe she thinks new bread
injurious for me). When I am tired of travelling and want
to rest, I find Society waiting for me with dinner and a
comfortable bed, with hot and cold water to wash in and
towels to wipe upon. Wherever I go, whatever I need,
Society, like the enslaved genii of some Eastern tale, is
ready and anxious to help me, to serve me, to do my
bidding, to give me enjoyment and pleasure. Society will
take me to Ober-Ammergau, will provide for all my wants
on the way, and, when I am there, will show me the
Passion Play, which she has arranged and rehearsed and
will play for my instruction ; will bring me back any way
I like to come, explaining, by means of her guide-books
and histories, everything upon the way that she thinks can
interest me; will, while I am absent, carry my messages
to those I have left behind me in England, and will bring
me theirs in return; will look after me and take care of
me and protect me like a mother—as no mother ever
could.
All that she asks in return is, that I shall do the work
she has given me to do. As a man works, so Society
deals by him.
To me Society says: “You sit at your desk and write,
that is all I want you to do. You are not good for much,
26 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
but you can spin out yards of what you and your friends,
I suppose, call literature; and some people seem to enjoy
reading it. Very well : you sit there and write this
literature, or whatever it is, and keep your mind fixed on
that. I will see to everything else for you. I will provide
you with writing materials, and books of wit and humour,
and paste and Scissors, and everything else that may be
necessary to you in your trade; and I will feed you and
clothe you and lodge you, and I will take you about to
places that you wish to go to ; and I will see that you
have plenty of tobacco and all other things practicable that
you may desire—provided that you work well. The more
work you do, and the better work you do, the better I
shall look after you. You write—that is all I want you
to do.”
“But,” I say to Society, “I don’t like work; I don’t
want to work. Why should I be a slave and work P”
“All right,” answers Society, “don’t work. I’m not
forcing you. All I say is, that if you don’t work for me,
I shall not work for you. . No work from you, no dinner
from me—no holidays, no tobacco.”
And I decide to be a slave, and work.
Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her
great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely
works by his muscles she regards as very little Superior
to the horse or the Ox, and provides for him just a little
better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and
from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise
his wages.
Of course hers is a very imperfect method of en-
couraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a
worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy
writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 27
deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often
more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme
is a right and Sound one ; her aims and intentions are
clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and
every year she grows in judgment.
One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will
pay each man according to
- º - ~ iſ T- *=—--
his deserts. *\}, ) i º * >{{L_
(*, *, 2) *=–s.
But do not be alarmed. 9 *\ º | \ — h
This will not happen in & S #º "sº §|-Hº
our time. º % -
Turning round, while
still musing about Society,
I ran against B. (literally).
He thought I was a
clumsy ass at first, º º-4
and said so ; but, on }**š. |ºzo%
recognising me,apolo- (ººf 9.3% ºf
!? - - § -
º *****º º/
lº
gised for his mistake. w !
He had been there for
Some time also, wait- º
ing for me. I told him
that I had secured
two corner seats in a smoking-carriage, and he replied that
he had done so too. By a curious coincidence, we had
both fixed upon the same carriage. I had taken the
corner seats near the platform, and he had booked the
two opposite corners. Four other passengers sat huddled
up in the middle. We kept the seats near the door, and
gave the other two away. One should always practise
generosity. -
There was a very talkative man in our carriage. I
never came across a man with such a fund of utterly













28 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
A:
2"
§3.2%
uninteresting anecdote. He had a friend with him—at
all events, the man was his friend when they started—
and he talked to this friend incessantly, from the moment
--~ * * *
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º
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*/
the train left Victoria until it arrived at Dover. First of all
he told him a long story about a dog. There was no point
in the story whatever. It was simply a bald narrative of
the dog's daily doings. The dog got up in the morning
and barked at the door, and when they came down and
opened the door there he was, and he stopped all day in
the garden; and when his wife (not the dog's wife, the
wife of the man who was telling the story) went out in
the afternoon, he was asleep on the grass, and they brought
him into the house, and he played with the children, and
















DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 29
in the evening he slept in the coal-shed, and next
morning there he was again. And so on, for about forty
minutes.
A very dear chum or near relative of the dog's might
doubtless have found the account enthralling; but what
possible interest a stranger—a man who evidently didn't
even know the dog—could be expected to take in the
report, it was difficult to conceive.
The friend at first tried to feel excited, and murmured :
“Wonderful ” “Very strange, indeed l’” “How
curious !” and helped the tale along by such ejaculations
as, “No, did he though P” “And what did you do
then 2° or, “Was that on the Monday or the Tuesday,
then P’’ But as the story progressed, he appeared to take
a positive dislike to the dog, and only yawned each time
that it was mentioned. -
Indeed, towards the end, I think, though I trust
I am mistaken, I heard him mutter, “Oh, damn the
dog l’”
After the dog story, we thought we were going to have
a little quiet. But we were mistaken ; for, with the same
breath with which he finished the dog rigmarole, our
talkative companion added :
“But I can tell you a funnier thing than that 5 5
We all felt we could believe that assertion. If he
had boasted that he could tell a duller, more uninteresting
story, we should have doubted him; but the possibility
of his being able to relate something funnier, we could
readily grasp. *
But it was not a bit funnier, after all. It was only
longer and more involved. It was the history of a man
who grew his own celery; and then, later on, it turned
out that his wife was the niece, by the mother's side, of
30 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
a man who had made an Ottoman out of an old packing-
Cal Se.
The friend glanced round the carriage apologetically
, about the middle of this story, with an expression that
said: -
“I’m awfully sorry, gentlemen; but it really is not
my fault. You see the position I’m in. Don't blame me.
Don’t make it worse for me to bear than it is.”
And we each replied with pitying, sympathetic looks
that implied:
“That’s all right, my dear sir; don’t you fret about
that. We see how it is. We only wish we could do
something to help you.”
The poor fellow seemed happier and more resigned
after that.
B. and I hurried on board at Dover, and were just
in time to secure the last two berths in the boat; and we
were glad that we had managed to do this, because our
idea was that we should, after a good Supper, turn in and
go comfortably to sleep.
B. said:
“What I like to do, during a sea passage, is to go to
sleep, and then wake up and find that I am there.”
We made a very creditable supper. I explained to
B. the ballast principle held by my seafaring friend,
and he agreed with me that the idea seemed reasonable;
and, as there was a fixed price for supper, and you had as
much as you liked, we determined to give the plan a fair
trial.
B. left me after supper somewhat abruptly, as it
appeared to me, and I took a stroll on deck by myself. I
did not feel very comfortable. I am what I call a moderate
sailor, I do not go to excess in either direction. On
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 31
ordinary occasions, I can swagger
, about and Smoke my pipe, and lie
about my Channel experi-
ences with the best of them.
But when there is what the Kºs
captain calls “a bit of a sea A. AW
on,” I feel sad, and try to get ài a."
away from the smell of the Y.
engines and the proximity
of people who smoke green .’
cigars.
There was a man smoking
a peculiarly mellow and unc-
tuous cigar on deck when I
got there. I don’t believe
he smoked it because he en-
joyed it. He did not look as if he enjoyed it. I believe
he smoked it merely
to show how well he
was feeling, and to
irritate people who
were not feeling very
well.
There is some-
thing very blatantly
offensive about the
man who feels well
on board a boat.
I am very objec-
tionable myself, I
know, when I am
feeling all right. It
is not enough for me


32 D I ARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
that I am not ill. I want everybody to see that I am not
ill. It seems to me that I am wasting myself if I don’t
let every human being in the vessel know that I am not
ill. I cannot sit still and be thankful, like you’d imagine
a sensible man would. I walk about the ship—smoking,
of course—and look at people who are not well with mild
but pitying surprise, as if I wondered what it was like and
how they did it. It is very foolish of me, I know, but I
cannot help it. I suppose it is the human nature that
exists in even the best of us that makes us act like this.
I could not get away from this man’s cigar; or when
I did, I came within range of the perfume from the engine-
room, and felt I wanted to go back to the cigar. There
seemed to be no neutral ground between the two.
If it had not been
that I had paid for
Saloon, I should have
gone fore. It was
much fresher there,
and I should have
been much happier
there altogether. But
I was not going to
pay for first-class and
then ride third—that
was not business. No,
I would stick to the
Swagger part of the
ship, and feel aristo-
cratic and sick.
A mate, or a boat-
Swain, or an admiral,
or one of those sort

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 33
of people—I could not be sure, in the darkness, which
it was—came up to me as I was leaning with my head
against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of
the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was
her first voyage.
I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew
older.
He replied: “Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night.”
What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to
lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, be-
fore she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly
change her mind, and think she could do it better on her
left. At the moment the man came up to me she was
trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished
speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, how-
ever, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently,
decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether.
And this was what he called being a “bit skittish !”
Seafaring people talk like this, because they are silly,
and do not know any better. It is no use being angry
with them. -
I got a little sleep at last. Not in the bunk I had
been at such pains to secure : I would not have stopped
down in that stuffy saloon, if anybody had offered me a
hundred pounds for doing so. Not that anybody did;
nor that anybody seemed to want me there at all. I
gathered this from the fact that the first thing that met
my eye, after I had succeeded in clawing my way down,
was a boot. The air was full of boots. There were sixty
men sleeping there—or, as regards the majority, I should
say trying to sleep there—some in bunks, some on tables,
and some under tables. One man was asleep, and was
snoring like a hippopotamus—like a hippopotamus that
3 *
34 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
had caught a cold, and was hoarse; and the other fifty-
nine were sitting up, throwing their boots at him. It was
a snore, very difficult to locate. From which particular
berth, in that dimly-lighted, evil-smelling place, it pro-
ceeded nobody was quite sure. At one moment, it ap-
peared to come, wailing and sobbing, from the larboard,
and the next instant it thundered forth, seemingly from
the starboard. So every man who could reach a boot
picked it up, and threw it promiscuously, silently praying
to Providence, as he did so, to guide it aright and bring
it safe to its desired haven.
I watched the weird scene for a minute or two, and
then I hauled myself on deck again, and sat down and
went to sleep on a coil of rope;
and was awakened,
in the course of time,
by a sailor
who want-
e d that
c oil of
r O p e to
throw at
the head of a
man who was
standing, doing
no harm to any-
body, on the
quay at Os-
tend.



DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 35
§aturoap, 24th.
Arrival at Ostend.—Coffee and Rolls.-Difficulty of Making
French Waiters understand German.-Advantages of Possess-
ing a Conscience That Does Not Get Up Too Early.—Villainy
Triumphant.—Virtue Ordered Outside.—A Homely English
Row.

"HEN I say I was “awakened” at Ostend,
I do not speak the strict truth. I was not
awakened—not properly. I was only half-
awakened. I never did get fairly awake until the after-
noon. During the journey from Ostend to Cologne I was
three-parts asleep and one-part partially awake. -
At Ostend, however, I was sufficiently aroused to grasp
the idea that we had got somewhere, and that I must find
my luggage and B., and do something or other; in addition
to which, a strange, vague instinct, but one which I have
never yet known deceive me, hovering about my mind,
and telling me that I was in the neighbourhood of some-
thing to eat and drink, spurred me to vigour and action.
I hurried down into the saloon, and there found B.
He excused himself for having left me alone all night—
he need not have troubled himself. I had not pined for
him in the least. If the only woman I had ever loved had
been on board, I should have sat silent, and let any other
fellow talk to her that wanted to, and that felt equal to it
—by explaining that he had met a friend and that they
had been talking. It appeared to have been a trying
conversation.
I also ran against the talkative man and his companion.
36 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Such a complete wreck of a once strong man as the latter
looked I have never before seen. Mere sea-sickness, how-
ever severe, could never have accounted for the change in
his appearance since, happy and hopeful, he entered the
railway-carriage at Victoria six short hours ago. His
friend, on the other hand, appeared fresh and cheerful,
and was relating an anecdote about a cow.
assº ºf
gº rº *exeſ sº
HºHºº
Hillſº
amº
w * * º
ºA:ºsſº
#####
are sº -
We took our bags into the Custom House and opened
them, and I sat down on mine, and immediately went
to sleep.
When I awoke, somebody whom I mistook at first for
a Field Marshal, and from force of habit—I was once a
volunteer—saluted, was standing over me, pointing melo-
dramatically at my bag. I assured him in picturesque
German that I had nothing to declare. He did not appear
to comprehend me, which struck me as curious, and took
the bag away from me, which left me nothing to sit upon
but the floor. But I felt too sleepy to be indignant.

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 37
After our luggage had been examined, we went into the
buffet. My instinct had not misled me: there I found hot
coffee, and rolls and butter. I ordered two coffees with
milk, some bread, and some butter.
I ordered them in the best German
I knew. As nobody understood me, I
went and got the
º º "º %; Z; % %
things for myself. *º * %
It saves a deal of #2 º' ºft:%
argument, that
method. People
See In to
know what
you mean in %
a moment §
then. %
º §
B. Sug- §: º
º ||| 3. ſº |
gested that "illº w
W h ile We Fº &º º
were in Bel-
gium, where everybody spoke French, while very few
indeed knew German, I should stand a better chance of
being understood if I talked less German and more
French.
He said :
“It will be easier for you, and less of a strain upon
the natives. You stick to French,” he continued, “as
long as ever you can. You will get along much better
with French. You will come across people now and then
—smart, intelligent people—who will partially understand
your French, but no human being, except a thought-
reader, will ever obtain any glimmering of what you mean
from your German.”






38 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
“Oh, are we in Belgium,” I replied sleepily; “I
thought we were in Germany. I didn’t know.” And
then, in a burst of confidence, I added, feeling that
further deceit was useless, “I don’t know where I am,
you know.” -
“No, I thought you didn’t,” he replied. “That is
exactly the idea you give anybody. I wish you’d wake
up a bit.”
We waited about an hour at Ostend, while our train
was made up. There was only one carriage labelled for
Cologne, and four more passengers wanted to go there
than the compartment would hold.
Not being aware of this, B. and I made no haste to
secure places, and, in consequence, when, having finished
our coffee, we leisurely strolled up and opened the carriage
door we saw that every seat was already booked. A bag
was in one space and a rug in another, an umbrella booked
a third, and so on. Nobody was there, but the seats were
gone ! w
It is the unwritten law among travellers that a man's
luggage deposited upon a seat, shall secure that seat to
him until he comes to sit upon it himself. This is a good
law and a just law, and one that, in my normal state, I
myself would die to uphold and maintain.
But at three o'clock on a chilly morning one's moral
sensibilities are not properly developed. The average
man's conscience does not begin work till eight or nine
o'clock—not till after breakfast, in fact. At three a.m. he
will do things that at three in the afternoon his soul would
revolt at.
Under ordinary circumstances I should as soon have
thought of shifting a man's bag and appropriating his
seat as an ancient Hebrew squatter would have thought
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE, - 39
of removing his neighbour's landmark; but at this time
in the morning my better nature was asleep.
I have often read of a man’s better nature being sud-
denly awakened. The business is generally accomplished
by an organ-grinder or a little child (I would back the
latter, at all events—give it a fair chance—to awaken
anything in this world that was not stone deaf, or that
had not been dead for more than twenty-four hours); and
if an organ-grinder or a little child had been around
Ostend station that morning, things might have been
different.
B. and I might have been saved from crime. Just as
we were in the middle of our villainy, the organ-grinder
or the child would have struck up, and we should have
burst into tears, and have rushed from the carriage, and
have fallen upon each other's necks outside on the
platform, and have wept, and waited for the next train.
As it was, after looking carefully around to see that
nobody was watch-
ing us, we slipped
quickly into the
carriage, and,
making room for
ourselves among
the luggage there,
sat down and tried
to look innocent
and easy.
B. said that
the best thing we
could do, when
the other people
came, would be to
tº-
P-->
º:º
:
º
§&
|se
i- -
.}-
;t
-c.&
*g
º*
A f. J. ºs§
*
º
º
B
§
|ſ
ºº
º

40 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
pretend to be dead asleep, and too stupid to understand
anything.
I replied that as far as I was concerned, I thought I
could convey the desired impression without stooping
to deceit at all, and prepared to make myself com-
fortable.
A few seconds later another man got into the carriage.
He also made room for himself among the luggage and
sat down.
“I am afraid that seat's taken, sir,” said B. when he
had recovered his surprise at the man’s coolness. “In
fact, all the seats in this carriage are taken.”
“I can't help that,” replied the ruffian, cynically.
“I’ve got to get to Cologne some time to-day, and there
seems no other way of doing it that I can see.”
“Yes, but so has the gentleman whose seat you have
taken got to get there,” I remonstrated ; “what about
him 2 You are thinking only of yourself l’”
My sense of right and justice was beginning to assert
itself, and I felt quite indignant with the fellow. Two
minutes ago, as I have explained, I could contemplate
the taking of another man’s seat with equanimity. Now,
such an act seemed to me shameful. The truth is that
my better nature never sleeps for long. Leave it alone
and it wakens of its own accord. Heaven help me ! I
am a sinful, worldly man, I know ; but there is good
at the bottom of me. It wants hauling up, but it’s
there.
This man had aroused it. I now saw the sinfulness
of taking another passenger's place in a railway-
carriage. \
But I could not make the other man see it. I felt
that some service was due from me to Justice, in com-
DIARY OF A PILG RIMAGE. 41
pensation of the wrong I had done her a few moments
ago, and I argued most eloquently.
My rhetoric was, however, quite thrown away.
“Oh! it's only a vice-consul,” he said; “here's his
%
ſ
ſ
2 *
%
f
º
'ſ
º
;ū
º
|
:
ſ
|
º
|
ſº
º
:
#%
name on the bag. There's plenty of room for him in
with the guard.”
It was no use my defending the sacred cause of Right
before a man who held sentiments like that ; so, having
lodged a protest against his behaviour, and thus eased
my conscience, I leant back and dozed the doze of the
just. -
Five minutes before the train started, the rightful
owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They
seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available
between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigor-
ously among themselves.
B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to







42 - DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice
of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible
among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring
to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted
that the other six were liars. -
What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English.
They all had languages of their own, there were four
Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no lan-
guage was good enough for them to insult each other in
but English.
Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their
ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us.
We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest,
who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally
settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.
These two stout ones, however—the German and One
of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award,
and called up the station-master.
The station-master did not wait to listen to what they
had to say, but at once began to abuse them for being in
the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed
of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment
that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the
people already there. - -
He also used English to explain this to them, and
they got out on the platform and answered him back in
English. -
English seems to be the popular language for quarrel-
ling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more
expressive.
We all watched the group from the window. We
were amused and interested. In the middle of the argu-
ment an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The
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44 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One
man in uniform always supports another man in uniform,
no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the
right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of
belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no
wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be
instructed to render them every assistance in their power,
and to take into custody any householder attempting to
interfere with them in the execution of their business.
The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the
two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English.
It was not good English in any sense of the word. The
man would probably have been able to give his feelings
much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but
that was not his object. His ambition, like every other
foreigner's, was to become an accomplished English
quarreller, and this was practice for him.
A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the
babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused
the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them
in English.
B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from
our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come
across a little homely English row like this.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 45
§aturbav, 24th—continueo,
A Man of Family.—An Eccentric Train.—Outrage on an
Englishman. — Alone in Europe 1 — Difficulty of Making
German Waiters Understand Scandinavian.— Danger of
Knowing Too Many Languages.—A Wearisome journey.—
Cologne, Ahoy 1
H E R E was a very well-informed Belgian in
| the carriage, and he told us something interest-
ing about nearly every town through which
we passed. I felt that if I could have kept awake, and
have listened to that man, and remembered what he
Said, and not mixed things up, I should have learnt
a good deal about the country between Ostend and
Cologne.
He had relations in nearly every town, had this man.
I suppose there have been, and are, families as large and
as extensive as his ; but I never heard of any other family
that, made such a show. They seemed to have been
planted out with great judgment, and were |
now all over the country. Every time ſ
awoke, I caught some such scattered Ž||
remark as : -
“ Bruges—you can see the belfry from
this side—plays a polka by Haydn every
hour. My aunt lives here.” “Ghent—
Hôtel de Ville, some say finest specimen
of Gothic architecture in Europe—where

46 DiARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. … • *
my mother lives. You could see the house if that church
wasn’t there.” “Just passed Alost—great hop centre.
My grandfather used to live there; he’s dead now.’
“There's the Royal chateau—here, just on this side.
My sister is married to a man who lives there—not in
the palace, I don't mean, but in Laeken.” “That’s
the dome of the Palais de Justice—they call Brussels
“Paris in little '—I like it better than Paris, myself—
not so crowded. I live in Brussels.” “Louvain—
there's Van de Weyer's statue, the I&30 revolutionist.
My wife's mother lives in Louvain. She wants us to
come and live there. She says we are too far away from
her at Brussels, but I don’t think so.” “Leige—see
the citadel? Got some cousins at Leige—only second
ones. Most of my first ones live at Maestricht”; and
so on all the way to Cologne.
I do not believe we passed a single town or village
that did not possess one or more specimens of this man’s
relatives. Our journey seemed, not so much like a tour
through Belgium and part of Northern Germany, as a visit
to the neighbourhood where this man's family resided.
, -; A I was careful to take a seat
- facing the engine at Ostend. I
prefer to travel that way. But
when I awoke a little later on, I
found myself going backwards. I
naturally felt indignant. I said:
“Who’s put me over here?
I was over there, you know.
You've no right to do that!”
They assured me, however,
that nobody had shifted me,
but that the train had turned
round at Ghent.

DIARY | OF A PILGRIMAGE. 47
Y was annoyed at this. It seemed to me a mean
trick for a train to start off in one direction, and thus
lure you into taking your seat (or somebody else's seat,
as the case might be) under the impression that you
were going to travel that way, and then, afterwards
turn round and go the other way. I felt very doubtful
in my own mind, as to whether the train knew where
it was going at all.
At Brussels we got out and had some more coffee
and rolls. I forget what language I talked at Brussels,
but nobody understood me. When I next awoke,
after leaving Brussels, I found myself going forwards
again. The engine had apparently changed its mind
for the second time, and was pulling the carriages
the other way now. I began to get thoroughly alarmed.
This train was simply doing what it liked. There was
no reliance to be placed upon it whatever. The
next thing it would do would be to go sideways. It
seemed to me that I Ought to get up and see into
this matter; but, while pondering the business, I fell
asleep again.
I was very sleepy indeed when they routed us out at
Herbesthal, to examine our luggage for Germany. I had
a vague idea that we were travelling in Turkey, and had
been stopped by brigands. When they told me to open
my bag, I said, “Never !” and remarked that I was an
Englishman, and that they had better be careful. I also
told them that they could dismiss any idea of ransom
from their minds at once, unless they were prepared to
take I.O.U.’s, as it was against the principles of our
family to pay cash for anything—certainly not for
relatives. -
They took no notice of my warning, and caught hold
4.
48 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
of my Gladstone. I resisted feebly, but was overpowered,
and went to sleep again.
On awakening, I discovered myself in the buffet. I
have no recollection of going there.
My instinct must have guided me
there during my sleep.
I ordered my usual repast of coffee
and rolls. (I must have been full of
coffee and rolls by this time.) I had
got the idea into my head now that
"]. I was in Norway, and so I ordered
them in broken Scandinavian, a few
words of which I had picked up dur-
ing a trip through the fiords last Summer.
Of course, the man did not understand; but I am
accustomed to witnessing the confusion of foreigners
when addressed in their native tongue, and so forgave
him—especially as, the victuals being well within reach,
language was a matter of Secondary importance.
I took two cups of coffee, as usual—one for B., and one
for myself—and, bringing them to the table, looked round
for B. I could not see him anywhere. What had be-
come of him 2 I had not seen him, that I could recollect,
for hours. I did not know where I was, or what I was
doing. I had a hazy knowledge that B. and I had started
off together—whether yesterday or six months ago, I could
not have said to save my life—with the intention, if I was
not mistaken, of going somewhere and seeing something.
We were now somewhere abroad—somewhere in Norway
was my idea; though why I had fixed on Norway is a
mystery to me to this day—and I had lost him
How on earth were we ever to find each other
again? A horrible picture presented itself to my mind

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 49
of our both wandering distractedly up and down Europe,
perhaps for years, vainly seeking each other. The
touching story of Evangeline recurred to me with ter-
rible vividness.
Something must be done, and that immediately,
Somehow or another I must find B. I roused myself.
and summoned to my aid every word of Scandinavian
that I knew. - * *
It was no good these people pretending that they did
not understand their own language, and putting me off
that way. They had got to understand it this time.
This was no mere question of coffee and rolls; this was a
serious business. I would make that waiter understand
my Scandinavian, if I had to hammer it into his head with
his own coffee-pot
I seized him by the arm, and, in Scandinavian that
must have been quite pathetic in its tragic fervour, I
asked him if he had seen my
friend—my friend B.
The man only stared.
I grew desperate. I shook
him. I said :
“My friend—big, great,
tall, large—is he where 2
Have you him to see :
where 2 Here 2 ” 7% *:::::
(I had to put it that d
way because Scandi-
navian grammar is not
a strong point with me,
and my knowledge of the
verbs is as yet limited
to the present tense of

50 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
the infinitive mood. Besides, this was no time to worry
about grace of style.) -
A crowd gathered round us, attracted by the man's
terrified expression. I appealed to them generally. I
said:
“My friend B.-head, red—boots, yellow, brown, gold
—coat, little squares—nose, much, largel Is he where 2
Him to see—anybody—where P’’
Not a soul moved a hand to help me. There they
stood and gaped
I repeated it all over again louder, in case anybody on
the outskirts of the mob had not heard it; and I repeated
it in an entirely new accent. I gave them every chance I
could. -
They chatted excitedly among themselves, and then a
bright idea seemed to strike one of them, a little more
~- intelligent-looking than the
rest, and he rushed outside
and began running up and
down, calling out something
very loudly, in which
the word “Norwegian”
kept on occurring.
He return-
(~ ed in a few
s 2. Seconds, evi-
l On ently exceed-
# , , ingly pleased
& with himself,
•. accompanied
by a kindly-looking old
gentleman in a white
hat.
Way was made in


DíARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 51
the crowd, and the old gentleman pressed forward. When
he got near, he smiled at me, and then proceeded to
address to me a lengthy, but no doubt kindly meant,
speech in Scandinavian.
Of course, it was all utterly unintelligible to me from
beginning to end, and my face clearly showed this. I
can grasp a word or two of Scandinavian here and there,
if pronounced slowly and distinctly ; but that is all.
The old gentleman regarded me with great surprise.
He said (in Scandinavian, of course):
“You speak Norwegian P”
I replied, in the same tongue:
“A little, a very little—very.”
He seemed not only disappointed, but indignant. He
explained the matter to the crowd, and they all seemed
indignant.
Why everybody should be indignant with me I could
not comprehend. There are plenty of people who do not
understand Scandinavian. It was absurd to be vexed
with me because I did not. I do know a little, and that
is more than some people do.
I inquired of the old gentleman about B. He did
understand me. I must give him credit for that. But
beyond understanding me, he was of no more use than
the others; and why they had taken so much trouble to
fetch him, I could not imagine.
What would have happened if the difficulty had con-
tinued much longer (for I was getting thoroughly wild
with the lot of them) I cannot say. Fortunately, at this
moment I caught sight of B. himself, who had just
entered the room.
I could not have greeted him more heartily if I had
wanted to borrow money of him.
52 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
“Well, I am glad to see you again l’” I cried. “Well,
this is pleasant l I thought I had lost you !”
“Why, you are English!” cried out the old gentleman
in the white hat, in very good Saxon, on hearing me
speak to B. -
“Well, I know that,” I replied, “and I’m proud of it.
Have you any objection to my being English P”
“Not in the least,” he answered, “if you'd only
talk English instead of Norwegian. I’m English my-
a • self; ” and he walked away,
evidently much puzzled.
B. said to me,
as we sat down :
“I’ll tell you
what’s the mat-
- % ter with you,
£7///
/
%
J. —you know
too many lan-
- - guages for this
continent. Your linguistic powers will be the ruin of
us if you don’t hold them in a bit. You don’t know any
Sanscrit or Chaldean, do you?”
I replied that I did not.
“Any Hebrew or Chinese ?”
** Not a Word.”
“Sure ??”
“Not so much as a full stop in any of them.”
“That’s a blessing,” said B., much relieved. “You
would be trying to palm off one or other of them on some
simple-minded peasant for German, if you did l’”
It is a wearisome journey, through the long, hot hours
of the morning, to Cologne. The carriage is stifling. Rail-
way travellers, I have always noticed, regard fresh air as




DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 53
poison. They like to live on the refuse of each other's
breath, and close up every window and ventilator tight.
The Sun pours down through glass and blind and scorches
our limbs. Our heads and our bodies ache. The dust
and soot drift in and settle on our clothes, and grime our
hands and face. We all doze and wake up with a start,
and fall to sleep again upon each other. I wake, and find
my neighbour with his head upon my shoulder. It seems
a shame to cast him off; he looks so trustful. But he is
heavy. I push him on to the man the other side. He is
just as happy there. We roll about; and when the train
jerks, we butt each other with our heads. Things fall
from the rack upon us. We look up
surprised, and go to sleep again. My
bag tumbles down upon the head of Tº
the unjust man in the corner. (Is it ś
retribution ?) He starts up, º 2%
begs my pardon, and sinks
back into oblivion. I am 2.6%//?%:
too sleepy to pick up the ſº 2% % ºf
bag. It lies there on the - 2%" |\
floor. The unjust man uses it for
a footstool.
We look out, through half-closed eyes, upon the
parched, level, treeless land; upon the little patchwork
farms of corn and beetroot, oats and fruit, growing undi-
vided, side by side, each looking like a little garden
dropped down into the plain; upon the little dull stone
houses.
A steeple appears far away upon the horizon. (The
first thing that we ask of men is their faith: “What do
you believe?” The first thing that they show us is their
church: “This we believe.”) Then a tall chimney ranges



54 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
itself alongside. (First faith, then works.) Then a con-
fused jumble of roofs, out of which, at last, stand forth
individual houses, factories, streets, and we draw up in
a sleeping town.
People open the carriage-door, and look in upon us.
They do not appear to think much of us, and close
the door again quickly, with a bang, and we sleep once
II].OTC.
As we rumble on, the country slowly wakes. Rude
V-shaped carts, drawn by yoked Oxen, and even some-
times by cows, wait patiently while we cross the long,
straight roads stretching bare for many a mile across the
plain. Peasants trudge along the fields to work. Smoke
rises from the villages and farm-houses. Passengers are
waiting at the wayside stations.
Towards mid-day, on looking out, we see two tiny
spires standing side by side against the sky. They seem
to be twins, and grow taller as we approach. I describe
them to B., and he says they are the steeples of Cologne
Cathedral; and we all begin to yawn and stretch, and to
collect our bags and coats and umbrellas. -
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 55
Thalf of $aturoap, 24th, amo $ome of
§unbap, 25th.
Difficulty of Keeping this Diary.—A Big Wash.-The
German Bed.—Its Goings On.—Manners and Customs of the
German Army.—B.'s Besetting Sin.—Cologne Cathedral.—
Thoughts Without Words.—A Curious Custom.
am not living as a man who keeps a diary
should live. I ought, of course, to sit down
in front of this diary at eleven o’clock at night, and
write down all that has occurred to me during the
day. But at eleven o'clock at night, I am in the middle
of a long railway journey, or have just got up, or am
just going to bed for a couple of hours. We go to bed
at odd moments, when we happen to come across a
bed, and have a few minutes to spare. We have been
to bed this afternoon, and are now having another
breakfast; and I am not quite sure whether it is yesterday
or to-morrow, or what day it is.
I shall not attempt to write up this diary in the
orthodox manner, therefore; but shall fix in a few lines
whenever I have half-an-hour with nothing better to do.
We washed ourselves in the Rhine at Cologne (we had
not had a wash since we had left our happy home in
England). We started with the idea of washing ourselves
at the hotel; but on seeing the basin and water and towel
provided, I decided not to waste my time playing with
Tº diary is getting mixed. The truth is, I
56 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
them. As well might Hercules have attempted to tidy up
the Augean stables with a squirt.
We appealed to the chambermaid. We explained to
3: Eğ 2 her that we wanted to
ºSºº º wash—to clean ourselves
Ǻf —not to blow bubbles.
ſº Could we not have
ſº bigger basins and
*:::: more water and more
º extensive towels 2
The chambermaid (a
staid old lady of
about fifty) did not
| |le | ſº
think that anything
il;
| 8 || º hºt º º º º
| *|†:=}. § |#jº OI UIS the hote
• *, *| º Wºź fºot Cologne,
and seemed to think
that the river was more what we wanted.
I fancied that the old soul was speaking sarcastically,
but B. said “No;” she was thinking of the baths alongside
the river, and suggested that we should go there. I
agreed. It seemed to me that the river—the Rhine—
would, if anything could, meet the case. There ought to
be plenty of water in it now, after the heavy spring
rains.
When I saw it, I felt satisfied. I said to B. :
“That's all right, old man; that’s the sort of thing
we need. That is just the sized river I feel I can get
myself clean in this afternoon.”
I have heard a good deal in praise of the Rhine, and
I am glad to be able to speak well of it myself. I found
it most refreshing. - -





DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 57
I was, however, sorry that we had washed in it
afterwards. I have heard from friends who have travelled
since in Germany that we completely spoiled that river for
the rest of the season. Not for business purposes, I do not
mean. The barge traffic has been, comparatively speaking,
uninterfered with. But the tourist trade has suffered
terribly. Parties who usually go up the Rhine by steamer
have, after looking at the river, gone by train this year.
The boat agents have tried to persuade them that the
Rhine is always that colour: that it gets like that owing
to the dirt and refuse washed down into it during its
course among the mountains.
But the tourists have refused to accept this explana-
tion. They have said:
“No. Mountains will account for a good deal, we
admit, but not for all that. We are acquainted with
the ordinary condition of the Rhine, and although
muddy, and at times unpleasant, it is passable. As it
is this summer, however, we would prefer not to
travel upon it. We will wait until after next year's
spring-floods.”
We went to bed after our wash. To the blasé English
bed - goer, accustomed all his life to the same old
hackneyed style of bed night after night, there is something
very pleasantly piquant about the experience of trying to
sleep in a German bed. He does not know it is a bed at
first. He thinks that someone has been going round the
room, collecting all the sacks and cushions and anti-
macassars and such articles that he has happened to find
about, and has piled them up on a wooden tray ready for
moving. He rings for the chambermaid, and explains to
her that she has shown him into the wrong room. He
wanted a bedroom.
58 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
She says: “This is a bedroom.”
He says: “Where’s the bed ”
“There !” she says, pointing to the box on which the
sacks and anti-macassars and cushions lie piled.
“That l” he cries. “How am I going to sleep in
that P”
The chambermaid does not know how he is going to
sleep there, never having seen a gentleman go to sleep
anywhere, and not knowing how they set about it; but .
suggests that he might try lying down flat, and shutting
his eyes. -
“But it is not long enough,” he says.
The chambermaid thinks he will be able to manage,
if he tucks his legs up.
He sees that he will not get anything better, and that
he must put up with it.
“Oh, very well !” he says. “Look sharp and get it
made, then.” es. She says: “It is made.”
2-": § He turns and regards the
girl sternly. Is she
taking advantage of his
being a lonely stranger,
far from home and
friends, to mock him 2
He goes over to what
she calls the bed, and
snatching off the top-
most sack from the
pile and holding it
up, says:
“Perhaps you will
tell me what this is,
then P”








DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 59
“That,” says the girl; “that’s the bed l’”
He is somewhat nonplussed at the unexpected
reply.
“Oh 1” he says. “Oh the bed, is it 2 I thought it
was a pincushion | Well, if it is the bed, then what is it
doing out here, on the top of everything else 2 You
think that because I’m only a man, I don’t understand
a bed | *
“That’s the proper place for it,” responds the chamber-
maid.
“What I on top 2"
“Yes, sir.” -
“Well, then where are the clothes P’”
“ Underneath, sir.”
“Look here, my good girl,” he says; “you don't
understand me, or I don’t understand you, one or the
other. When I go to sleep, I lie on a bed and pull the
clothes over me. I don’t want to lie on the clothes, and
cover myself with the bed. This isn't a comic ballet, you
know !”
The girl assures him that there is no mistake about
the matter at all. There is the bed, made according to .
German notions of how a bed should be made. He can
make the best of it and try to go to sleep upon it, or he
can be sulky and go to sleep on the floor.
He is very much surprised. It looks to him the sort
of a bed that a man would make for himself on coming
home late from a party. But it is no use arguing the
matter with the girl. -
“All right,” he says; “bring me a pillow, and I’ll
risk it !” - .
The chambermaid explains that there are two pillows
on the bed already, indicating, as she does so, two flat
60 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
cushions, each one a yard Square, placed one on top of
the other at one end of the mixture.
“These !” exclaims the weary traveller, beginning to
feel that he does not want to go to bed at all. “These
are not pillows I want something to put my head
on ; not a thing that comes down to the middle of my
back Don't tell me that I’ve got to sleep on these
things l’”
But the girl does tell him so, and also implies that she
has something else to do than to stand there all day
talking bed-gossip with him.
“Well, just show me how to start,” he says, “which
way you get into it, and then I won't keep you any
longer; I'll puzzle out the rest for myself.”
She explains the trick to him and leaves, and he
undresses and crawls in.
The pillows give him a good deal of worry. He does
not know whether he is meant to sit on them or merely
to lean up against them. In experimenting upon this
point, he bumps his head against the top board of the
bedstead. At this, he says, “Oh l’’ and shoots himself
down to the bottom of the bed. Here all his ten toes
simultaneously come into sharp contact with the board at
the bottom.
Nothing irritates a man more than being rapped over
the toes, especially if he feels that he has done nothing to
deserve it. He says, “Oh, damn !” this time, and
spasmodically doubles up his legs, thus giving his knees
a violent blow against the board at the side of the bed.
(The German bedstead, be it remembered, is built in the
form of a shallow, open box, and the victim is thus com-
pletely surrounded by solid pieces of wood with sharp .
edges. I do not know what species of wood it is that is
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 6I
employed. It is extremely hard, and gives forth a curious
musical sound when struck sharply with a bone.)
After this he lies perfectly still for a while, wondering
where he is going to be hit next. Finding that nothing
happens, he begins to regain confidence, and ventures to
gently feel around with his left leg and take stock of his
position. -
For clothes, he has only a verythin blanket and sheet,
and beneath these he feels decidedly chilly. The bed is
warm enough, so far as it goes, but there is not enough of
it. He draws it up round his chin, and then his feet
begin to freeze. He pushes it down over his feet, and
then all the top part of him shivers.
He tries to roll up into a ball, so as to get the whole
of himself underneath it, but does not succeed; there is
always some of him left outside in the cold.
He reflects that a “boneless wonder ’’ or a “man
serpent” would be comfortable enough in this bed, and
wishes that he had been brought up as a contortionist. If
he could only tie his legs round his neck, and tuck his
head in under his arm, all would yet be well.
Never having been taught to do any really useful
tricks such as these, however, he has to be content to
remain spread out, warming a bit of himself at a time,

62 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
It is, perhaps, foolish of him, amid so many real
troubles, to allow a mere aesthetical consideration to worry
him, but as he lies there on his back, looking down at
himself, the sight that he presents to himself considerably
annoys him. The puffed-up bed, resting on the middle
of him, gives him the appearance of a man suffering from
some monstrous swelling, or else of some exceptionally .
|
. . §
| §Ir, : ... º.º.º. §§
||||| hº, Wºg
§§
2_x: †-,
º -- º - --->
!
|
- - ºf
º º
º
º
* a
º
P
º
G
ºf
--
well-developed frog that has been turned up the wrong
way and does not know how to get on to its legs again.
Another vexation that he has to contend with is,
that every time he moves a limb or breathes extra
hard, the bed (which is only of down) tumbles off on to
the floor.
You cannot lean out of a German bed to pick up
anything off the floor, owing to its box-like formation; so
he has to scramble out after it, and of course every time
he does this he barks both his shins twice against the
sides of the bed.
When he has performed this feat for about the tenth
time, he concludes that it was madness for him, a mere
raw amateur at the business, to think that he could manage
a complicated, tricky bed of this sort, that must take even





EIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 63
an experienced man all he knows to sleep in it; and gets
out and camps on the floor.
At least, that is what I did. B. is accustomed to
German beds, and doubled himself up and went off to
sleep without the slightest difficulty.
We slept for two hours, and then got up and went
back to the railway-station, where we dined. The railway
refreshment-room in German towns appears to be as much
patronised by the inhabitants of the town as by the
travellers passing through. It is regarded as an ordinary
restaurant, and used as such by the citizens. We found
the dining - room at Cologne station crowded with
Cologneists.
All classes of citizens were there, but especially sol-
diers. There were all sorts of soldiers—soldiers of rank,
and soldiers of rank and file; attached soldiers (very much
attached, apparently) and soldiers unattached; stout sol-
diers, thin soldiers; old soldiers, young soldiers. Four
very young soldiers sat opposite us, drinking beer. I
never saw such young soldiers out by themselves before.
They each looked about twelve years old, but may have
been thirteen; and they each looked, also, ready and will-
ing to storm a battery, if the order were giver to them to

- 5
64 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
do it. There they sat, raising and lowering their huge
mugs of beer, discussing military matters, and rising every
now and again to gravely salute some officer as he passed,
and to receive as gravely his grave salute in return.
There seemed to be a deal of saluting to be gone
through. Officers kept entering and passing through the
;
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room in an almost continual stream, and every time one
came in sight all the military drinkers and eaters rose and
saluted, and remained at the salute until the officer had
passed.
One young Soldier, who was trying to eat a plate of
soup near us, I felt quite sorry for. Every time he got
the spoon near his mouth an officer invariably hove in
view, and down would have to go the spoon, Soup and all,
and up he would have to rise. It never seemed to occur











































DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 65
to the silly fellow to get under the table and finish his
dinner there.
We had half-an-hour to spare between dinner and the
starting of our train, and B. suggested that we should go
into the cathedral. That is B.'s one weakness, churches.
I have the greatest difficulty in getting him past a church-
door. We are walking along a street, arm in arm, talking
as rationally and even as virtuously as need be, when all
at once I find that B. has become silent and abstracted.
I know what it is ; he has caught sight of a church. I
pretend not to notice any change
in him, and endeavour to hurry
him on. He lags more and more
behind, however, and at last
stops altogether.
“Come, come,” I say to him,
encouragingly, “pull
yourself together, and be zºº
a man. Don't think about
it. Put it behind you, and §
determine that you won't ſº
be conquered. Come, we |
shall be round the corner
in another minute, where
you won’t be able to R-. -
see it. Take my hand, * º 2% º
and let’s run ” * ==
He makes a few feeble steps forward with me, and
then stops again. -
“It’s no good, old man,” he says, with a sickly smile,
so full of pathos that it is impossible to find it in one's
heart to feel anything but pity for him. “I can't help it.
I have given way to this sort of thing too long. It is too


5 *
66 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
late to reform now. You go on and get a drink some-
where; I'll join you again in a few minutes. Don't worry
about me; it’s no good.”
And back he goes with tottering steps, while I sadly
pass on into the nearest café, and, over a glass of absinthe
or cognac, thank Providence that I learnt to control my
craving for churches in early youth, and so am not now
like this poor B.
In a little while he comes in, and sits down beside
me. There is a wild, unhealthy excitement in his eye,
and, under a defiant air of unnatural gaiety, he attempts
to hide his consciousness of guilt. -
“It was a lovely altar-cloth,” he whispers to me, with
an enthusiasm that only makes one sorrow for him the
more, so utterly impossible does it cause all hope of cure
to seem. “And they've got a coffin in the north crypt
that is simply a poem. I never enjoyed a sarcophagus
more in all my life.”
I do not say much at the time; it would be useless.
But after the day is done, and we are standing beside our
little beds, and all around is as silent as one can expect it
to be in an hotel where people seem to be arriving all
night long with heavy luggage, and to be all, more or less,
in trouble, I argue with him, and gently reprove him. To
avoid the appearance of sermonising as much as possible,
I put it on mere grounds of expediency. -
“How are we to find time,” I say, “to go to all the
places that we really ought to go to—to all the cafés and
theatres and music-halls and beer-gardens and dancing.
Saloons that we want to visit—if you waste half the
precious day loafing about churches and cathedrals 2 ”
He is deeply moved, and promises to swear off. He
vows, with tears in his voice, that he will never enter a
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 67
church-door again. But next morning, when the tempta-
tion comes, all his good resolutions are swept away, and
again he yields. It is no good being angry with him,
because he evidently does really try; but there is some-
thing about the mere odour of a church that he simply
cannot withstand. -
Not knowing, then, that this weakness of his for
churches was so strong, I made no objection to the pro-
posed visit to Cologne Cathedral, and, accordingly, to-
wards it we wended our way. B. has seen it before, and
knows all about it. He tells me it was begun about the
middle of the thirteenth century, and was only completed
ten years ago. It seems to me that there must have been
gross delay on the part of the builder. Why, a plumber
would be ashamed to take as long as that over a job
B. also asserts that the two towers are the highest
church towers in the world. I dispute this, and depre-
cate the towers generally. B. warmly defends them. He
says they are higher than any building in Europe, except
the Eiffel Tower.
“Oh, dear no l’” I say, “there are many buildings
higher than they in Europe—to say nothing of Asia and
America.” -
I have no authority for making this assertion. As a
matter of fact, I know nothing whatever about the matter.
I merely say it to irritate B. He appears to take a sort
of personal interest in the building, and he enlarges upon
its beauties and advantages with as much fervour as if he
were an auctioneer trying to sell the place.
He retorts that the towers are 512 feet high.
I say:
“Nonsense! Somebody has imposed upon you, because
they see you are a foreigner.”
68 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
He becomes quite angry at this, and says he can show
me the figures in the guide-book. -
“The guide-book!” I reply, scornfully, “You’ll believe
a newspaper next l’’
B. asks me, indignantly, what height I should say they
are, then. I examine them critically for a few minutes,
and then give it as my opinion that they do not exceed
510 feet at the very outside. B. seems annoyed with me,
and we enter the church in silence.
There is little to be said about a cathedral. Except
to the professional sightseer, one is very much like
another. Their beauty to me lies, not in the paintings
and sculpture they give houseroom to, nor in the bones
and bric-à-brac piled up in their cellars, but in themselves
—their echoing vastness, their deep silence.
Above the little homes of men, above the noisy teem-
ing streets, they rise like some soft strain of perfect music,
cleaving its way amid the jangle of discordant notes.
Here, where the voices of the world sound faint; here,
where the city's clamour comes not in, it is good to rest
for a while—if only the pestering guides would leave one
alone—and think.
There is much help in Silence. From its touch we gain
renewed life. Silence is to the soul what his Mother
Earth was to Briareus. From contact with it we rise
healed of our hurts and strengthened for the fight.
Amid the babel of the schools we stand bewildered and
affrighted. Silence gives us peace and hope. Silence teaches
us no creed, only that God’s arms are around the universe.
How small and unimportant seem all our fretful
troubles and ambitions when we stand with them in our
hand before the great calm face of Silence We smile at
them ourselves, and are ashamed.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 69
Silence teaches us how little we are—how great we
are. In the world's market-places we are tinkers, tailors,
apothecaries, thieves—respectable or otherwise, as the
case may be—mere atoms of a mighty machine—mere
insects in a vast hive. -
It is only in Silence that it comes home to us that we
are something much greater than this—that we are men,
with all the universe and all eternity before us.
It is in Silence we hear the voice of Truth. The
temples and the marts of men echo all night and day to
the clamour of lies and shams and quackeries. But in
Silence falsehood cannot live. You cannot float a lie on
Silence. A lie has to be puffed aloft, and kept from falling
by men's breath. Leave a lie on the bosom of Silence,
and it sinks. A truth floats there fair and stately, like
Some stout ship upon a deep ocean. Silence buoys her
up lovingly for all men to see. Not until she has grown
worn-out and rotten, and is no longer a truth, will the
waters of Silence close over her.
Silence is the only real thing we can lay hold of in this
world of passing dreams. Time is a shadow that will
vanish with the twilight of humanity; but Silence is a part
of the eternal. All things that are true and lasting have
been taught to men's hearts by Silence.
Among all nations, there should be vast temples raised
where the people might worship Silence and listen to it,
for it is the voice of God.
These fair churches and cathedrals that men have
reared around them throughout the world, have been built
as homes for mere creeds—this one for Protestantism,
that one for Romanism, another for Mahomedanism. But
God's Silence dwells in all alike, only driven forth at
times by the tinkling of bells and the mumbling of
70 ...) IARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
prayers; and, in them, it is good to sit awhile and have
communion with her.
We strolled round, before we came out. Just by the
entrance to the choir an official stopped me, and asked
me if I wanted to go and see a lot of fal-lal things he had
got on show—relics and bones, and old masters, and such-
like Wardour-street rubbish.
I told him, “No”; and attempted to pass on, but he
said: º
“No, no! You don’t pay, you don't go in there,” and
shut the gate.
He said this sentence in English ; and the precision
and fluency with which he delivered it rather suggested
the idea that it was a phrase much in request, and one
that he had had a good deal of practice in.
It is very prevalent throughout Germany, this custom
of not allowing you to go in to see a thing unless you
pay.
TIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 7I
Eno of $5aturoay, 24tb,
ano JBeginning of $5umbay, 25th–Continueb.
The Rhine !—How History is Written.—Complicated
Villages.—How a Peaceful Community was Very Much Upset.
—The German Railway Guard.—His Passion for Tickets.—
We Diffuse Comfort and joy Wherever We Go, Gladdening
the Weary, and Bringing Smiles to Them that Weep.--
“Tickets, Please.”— Hunting Experiences. – A Natural
Mſistake.—Free Acrobatic Performance by the Guard.—The
Railway Authorities' Little joke.—Why We Should Think
of the Sorrows of Others. -

E returned to the station just in time to
\ \ / secure comfortable seats, and at 5.Io steamed
out upon our fifteen hours' run to Munich.
From Bonn to Mayence the line keeps by the side of the
Rhine nearly the whole of the way, and we had a splendid
view of the river, with the old-world towns and villages
that cluster round its bank, the misty mountains that
make early twilight upon its swiftly rolling waves, the
castled crags and precipices that rise up sheer and
majestic from its margin, the wooded rocks that hang
with threatening frown above its sombre depths, the
ruined towers and turrets that cap each point along its
shores, the pleasant isles that stud like gems its broad
expanse of waters.
Few things in this world come up to expectation,
especially those things of which one has been led to
expect much, and about which one has heard a good
deal. With this philosophy running in my head, I was
prepared to find the Rhine a much over-rated river.
72 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
I was pleasantly disappointed. The panorama which
unfolded itself before our eyes, as we sped along through
the quiet twilight that was deepening into starry night,
was wonderfully beautiful, entrancing and expressive.
I do not intend to describe it to you. To do justice
to the theme, I should have to be even a more brilliant
and powerful writer than I am. To attempt the subject,
without doing it justice, would be a waste of your time,
sweet reader, and of mine—a still more important
matter.
I confess that it was not my original intention to let
you off so easily. I started with the idea of giving you a
rapid but glowing and eloquent word-picture of the valley
of the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence. For background,
I thought I would sketch in the historical and legendary
events connected with the district, and against this, for
a foreground, I would draw, in vivid colours, the modern
aspect of the scene, with remarks and observations thereon.
Here are my rough notes, made for the purpose :—
Mems. for Chapter on Rhine: “Constantine the Great
used to come here—so did Agrippa. (N.B.-Try and find
out something about Agrippa.) Caesar had a good deal to
do with the Rhine—also Nero's mother.” &
(To the reader.—The brevity of these memoranda
renders their import, at times, confusing. For instance,
this means that Caesar and Nero's mother both had a
good deal to do with the Rhine; not that Caesar had a
good deal to do with Nero's mother. I explain this
because I should be sorry to convey any false impression
concerning either the lady or Caesar. Scandal is a thing
abhorrent to my nature.)
Notes continued: “The Ubii did something on the
right bank of the Rhine at an early period, and afterwards
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 73
were found on the other side. (Expect the Ubii were a
tribe; but make sure of this, as they might be something
in the fossil line.) Cologne was the cradle of German art.
Talk about art and the old masters. Treat them in a
kindly and gentle spirit. They are dead now. Saint
Ursula was murdered at Cologne, with eleven thousand
virgin attendants. There must have been quite a party
of them. Draw powerful and pathetic imaginary picture
of the slaughter. (N.B.-Find out who murdered them
all.) Say something about the Emperor Maximilian.
Call him “the Mighty Maximilian.’ Mention Charlemagne
(a good deal should be made out of Charlemagne) and the
Franks. (Find out all about the Franks, and where they
lived, and what has become of them.) Sketch the various
contests between the Romans and the Goths. (Read up
‘Gibbon’ for this, unless you can get enough out of
Mangnall's Questions.) Give picturesque account—with
comments—of the battles between the citizens of Cologne
and their haughty archbishops. (N.B.-Let them fight
on a bridge over the Rhine, unless it is distinctly stated
somewhere that they didn't.) Bring in the Minne-singers,
especially Walter von Vogel-
* ſº tº —— º–º Sº S \-
weid ; make him sing under -** * ~~~~ -: , . S
zz Tº t * . . * * * sy 2. a
a castle-wall somewhere, and .__-__ = , = * * , , , ; ,
ſº e 2:22: - ... 26 - wº º
let the girl die. Talk about º #ºf ====<< * **
tº e tº . gº tº * - 3: º: ~===– =. --t -
Albert Dürer. Criticise his ãºs rººs — -
style. Say it’s flat. (If pos- ºg (ºft.
sible, find out if it is flat.) # º
‘The rat tower on the Rhine,’ ºf º -
near Bingen. Describe the ºfflº, Nº"
place and tell the whole -- iº 3’º-
. y e d +=== - * - => -º
story. Don't spin it out ––f:=--
too long, because everybody → --
t——-"

74 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
knows it. ‘The Brothers of Bornhofen,’ story connected
with the twin castles of Sterrenberg and Liebenstein.
Conrad and Heinrich—brothers—both love Hildegarde.
She was very beautiful. Heinrich generously refuses to
marry the beautiful Hildegarde, and goes away to the
Crusades, leaving her to his brother Conrad. Conrad
considers over the matter for a year or two, and then he
decides that he won’t marry her either, but will leave her.
for his brother Heinrich, and he goes off to the Crusades,
from whence he returns, a few years later on, with a
Grecian bride. The beautiful H., muddled up between
the pair of them, and the victim of too much generosity,
gets sulky (don’t blame her), and shuts herself up in a
lonely part of the castle, and won’t see anybody for years.
Chivalrous Heinrich returns, and is wild that his brother
C. has not married the beautiful H. It does not occur to
him to marry the girl even then. The feverish yearning
displayed by each of these two brothers, that the other
one should marry the beloved Hildegarde, is very touching.
Heinrich draws his sword, and throws himself upon his
brother C. to kill him. The beautiful Hildegarde, how-
ever, throws herself between them and reconciliates them,
and then, convinced that neither of them means business,
and naturally disgusted with the whole affair, retires into
a nunnery. Conrad's Grecian bride subsequently throws
herself away on another man, upon which Conrad
throws himself on his brother H.’s breast, and they swear
eternal friendship. (Make it pathetic. Pretend you have
sat amid the ruins in the moonlight, and give the scene—
with ghosts.) ‘Rolandseck,' near Bonn. Tell the story
of Roland and Hildegunde (see Baedeker, p. 66). Don’t
make it too long, because it is so much like the other.
Describe the funeral P The ‘Watch Tower on the Rhine’
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 75
below Audernach. Query, isn't there a song about this 2
If so, put it in. Coblentz and Ehrenbreitstein. Great
fortresses. Call them “the Frowning Sentinels of the
State.” Make reflections on the German army, also on
war generally. Chat about Frederick the Great. (Read
Carlyle's history of him, and pick out the interesting
bits.) The Drachenfels. Quote Byron. Moralise about
ruined castles generally, and describe the middle ages,
with your views and opinions on same.”
There is much more of it, but that is sufficient to let
you see the scheme I had in my head. I have not carried
out my scheme, because, when I came to reflect upon the
matter, it seemed to me that the idea would develop
into something that would be more in the nature of a
history of Europe than a chapter in a tourist's diary, and
I determined not to waste my time upon it, until there
arose a greater public demand for a new History of Europe
than there appears to exist at present.
“Besides,” I argued to myself, “such a work would be
just the very thing with which to beguile the tedium of a
long imprisonment. At some future time I may be glad
of a labour of this magnitude to occupy a period of in
voluntary inaction.” - -
“This is the sort of thing,” I said to myself, “to save
up for Holloway or Pentonville.”
It would have been a very enjoyable ride altogether,
that evening's spin along the banks of the Rhine, if I had
not been haunted at the time by the idea that I should
have to write an account of it next day in my diary. As
it was, I enjoyed it as a man enjoys a dinner when he has
got to make a speech after it, or as a critic enjoys a play.
We passed such odd little villages every here and
there. Little places so crowded up between the railway
76 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
and the river that there was no room in them for any
streets. All the houses were jumbled up together just
anyhow, and how any man who lived in the middle could
get home without climbing over half the other houses in
the place I could not make out. They were the sort of
villages where a man's mother-in-law, coming to pay him
a visit, might wander around all day, hearing him, and
even now and then seeing him, yet never being able to
get at him in consequence of not knowing the way in.
A drunken man, living in one of these villages, could
never hope to get home. He would have to sit down out-
side, and wait till his head was clear.
We witnessed the opening scenes of a very amusing
little comedy at one of the towns where the train drew up.
The chief characters were played by an active young goat,
a small boy, an elderly man and a woman, parents of the
small boy and owners of the goat, and a dog.
First we heard a yell, and then, from out a cottage
opposite the station, bounded
an innocent and happy goat,
and gambolled
% around. A long
jºr rope, one end
º of which was
fastened to his
neck, trailed be-
hind him. After
the goat (in the
double sense of
the phrase)
ºf . ºe came a child.
** The child tried to catch
the goat by means of
{\f
# º
jº
*||
yº
A











DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 77
the rope, caught itself in the rope instead, and went down
with a bump and a screech. Whereupon a stout woman,
the boy's mother apparently, ran out from the cottage,
and also made for the goat. The goat flew down the road,
and the woman flew after it. At the first corner, the
woman trod on the rope, and then she went down with a
bump and a screech. Then the goat turned and ran up
the street, and, as it passed the cottage, the father ran
out and tried to stop it. He was an old man, but still
seemed to have plenty of vigour in him. He evidently
guessed how his wife and child had gone down, and he
endeavoured to avoid the rope and to skip -
over it when it came near him. But the
goat’s movements were too erratic for him.
-
* *-
-º . 2*
His turn came, and he trod on the rope, and went down
in the middle of the road, opposite his own door, with a
thud that shook us all up against each other as we stood
looking out of the carriage-window, and sat there and
cursed the goat. Then out ran a dog, barking furiously,
and he went for the goat, and got the end of the rope
in his teeth and held on to it like grim death. Away

78 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
went the goat, at his end of the rope, and, with him,
the dog at the other end. Between them, they kept the
rope about six inches above the ground, and with it they
remorselessly mowed down every living thing they came
across in that once peaceful village. In the course of less
than half a minute we counted fourteen persons sitting
down in the middle of the road. Eight of them were
cursing the goat, four were cursing the dog, and two of
them were cursing the old man for keeping the goat, one
of these two, and the more violent one, being the man's
own wife.
The train left at this juncture. We entreated the
railway officials to let us stop and see the show out. The
play was becoming quite interesting. It was so full of
movement. But they said that we were half-an-hour late
as it was, and that they dared not.
We leaned out of the window, and watched for as long
as we could ; and after the village was lost to view in the
distance, we could still, by listening carefully, hear the
thuds, as one after another of the inhabitants sat down
and began to Swear.
At about eleven o'clock we had some beer—you can
generally obtain such light refreshment as bottled beer
and coffee and rolls from the guard on a through long-
distance train in Germany—took off our boots, and
saying “Good-night” to each other, made a great show of
going to sleep. But we never succeeded in getting there.
They wanted to see one's ticket too often for one to get
fairly off.
Every few minutes, so it seemed to me, though in
reality the intervals may perhaps have been longer, a
ghostly face would appear at the carriage-window, and
ask to see our tickets.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 79
Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome,
and does not know what else to do with himself, he takes
a walk round the train, and gets the passengers to show
him their tickets, after which he returns to his box
cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about Sunsets
and mountains and old masters; but to the German
railway-guard the world can show nothing more satisfy-
ing, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.
Nearly all the German railway officials have this same
craving for tickets. If only they get somebody to show
them a railway-ticket, they are happy. It seemed a
harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided that it
would be only kind to humour them in it during our
stay. -
Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway
official standing about, looking sad or weary, we went up
to him and showed him our tickets. The sight was like
a ray of Sunshine to him ; all his care was immediately
forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we
went and bought one. A mere single third to the next
station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but
if the poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he
wanted more than ordin-
ary cheering-up, we got
him a second-class re-
turn. -
For the purpose of
our journey to Ober-
Ammergau and back,
we each carried with us
a folio containing some
ten or twelve first-class
tickets between different

6
8o DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles;
and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official,
a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his
aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed
to B. that we should take this man into a quiet corner,
and both of us show him all our tickets at once—the
whole twenty or twenty-four of them—and let him take
%g
º Ø
ſºsº
%% /
/ ".
/
º
*7
ź
them in his hand and look at them for as long as he liked.
I wanted to comfort him.
B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said
that even if it did not turn the man's head (and it was
more than probable that it would), so much jealousy



DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 8I
would be created against him among the other railway
people throughout Germany, that his life would be made
a misery to him.
So we bought and showed him a first-class return to
the next station but one ; and it was quite pathetic to
watch the poor fellow's face brighten up at the sight, and
to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from which it
had so long been absent.
But at times, one wishes that the German railway
official would control his passion for tickets—or, at least,
keep it within due bounds.
Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of
showing his ticket all day and night long, and the middle
of a wearisome journey is not the proper time for a man
to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see your
‘‘ billet.” -
You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where
your ticket is. You are not quite sure that you have got
a ticket; or if you ever had One, Somebody has taken it
away from you. You have put it by very carefully, think-
ing that it would not be wanted for hours, and have
forgotten where. -
There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on,
and five more in the overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is
in one of those pockets. If not, it is possibly in one of
the bags—somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you only
knew where that was, or your purse.
You begin a search. You stand up and shake your-
self. Then you have another feel all over. You look
round in the course of the proceedings; and the sight of
the crowd of curious faces watching you, and of the man
in uniform waiting with his eye fixed severely upon you,
Convey to you, in your then state of confusion, the
6 %
82 . DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
momentary idea that this is a police-court scene, and
that if the ticket is found upon you, you will probably get
five years.
Upon this you vehemently protest your innocence.
“I tell you I haven't got it !” you exclaim;-“never
seen the gentleman's ticket. You let me gol I 5 5
Here the surprise of your fellow-passengers recalls
you to yourself, and you proceed on your exploration.
You overhaul the bags, turning everything out on to the
floor, muttering curses on the whole railway system of
Germany as you do so. Then you feel in your boots.
You make everybody near you stand up to see if they
are sitting upon it, and you go down on your knees and
grovel for it under the seat.
“You didn’t throw it out of the window with your
sandwiches, did you ?” asks your friend.
“No I Do you think I’m a fool 2 ” you answer,
irritably. “What should I want to do that for 2 ”
On going systematically over yourself for about the
twentieth time, you discover it in your waistcoat pocket,
and for the next half-hour you sit and wonder how you
came to miss it on the previous nineteen occasions.
Meanwhile, during this trying scene, the conduct of
the guard has certainly not tended to allay your anxiety
and nervousness. All the time that you have been look-
ing for your ticket, he has been doing silly tricks on the
step outside, imperilling his life by every means that
experience and ingenuity can suggest.
The train is going at the rate of thirty miles an hour,
the express speed in Germany, and a bridge comes in
sight crossing over the line. On seeing this bridge, the
guard, holding on by the window, leans his body as far
back as ever it will go. You look at him, and then at the
E) JARY OF A PILGIRIMAGE. 83
rapidly-nearing bridge, and calculate that the arch will
just take his head off without injuring any other part of
him whatever, and you wonder whether the head will
be jerked into the carriage or will fall outside.
When he is three inches off the bridge, he pulls him-
self up straight, and the brickwork, as the train dashes
through, kills a fly that was trespassing on the upper part
of his right ear.
Then, when the bridge is passed,
and the train is skirting the very edge
of a precipice, so that a stone dropped
just outside the window would tumble
straight down 300 feet, he suddenly lets
go, and, balancing himself on the foot-
board without holding on to anything,
commences to dance a sort of Teutonic
cellar - flap, and to warm his
body by flinging his arms about ^re
in the manner of cabmen on a
cold day.
The first essential to com- #.
fortable railway travelling in ###| ||
Germany is to make up your #3 º'
mind not to care a rap whether . . . . .
the guard gets killed in the
course of the journey or not.
Any tender feeling towards the guard
makes railway travelling in the Father-
land a simple torture. -
At five a.m. (how fair and sweet and fresh the earth
looks in the early morning ! Those lazy people who lie in
bed till eight or nine miss half the beauty of the day, if
they but knew it. It is only we who rise early that really

84 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
enjoy Nature properly) I gave up trying to get to sleep,
and made my way to the dressing-room at the end of the
car, and had a wash.
It is difficult to wash in these little places, because the
cars shake so; and when you have got both your hands
and half your head in the basin, and are unable to protect
yourself, the sides of the room, and the water-tap and the
Soap-dish, and other cowardly things, take a mean au van-
tage of your helplessness to punch you as hard as ever
they can ; and when you back away from these, the door
Swings open and slaps you from behind.
I succeeded, however, in getting myself fairly wet all
over, even if I did nothing else, and then I looked about
for a towel. Of course, there was no towel. That is the
trick. The idea of the railway authorities is to lure the
passenger, by providing him with Soap and water and a
basin, into getting himself thoroughly soaked, and then to
let it dawn upon him that there is no towel. That is
their notion of fun
I thought of the handkerchiefs in my bag, but to get
to them I should have to pass compartments containing
ladies, and I was only in early morning dress.
So I had to wipe myself with a newspaper which I
happened to have in my pocket, and a more unsatisfactory
thing to dry oneself upon I cannot conceive.
I woke up B. when I got back to the carriage, and
persuaded him to go and have a wash ; and in listening
to the distant sound of his remarks when he likewise dis-
covered that there was no towel, the recollection of my
own discomfiture passed gently away.
Ah how true it is, as good people tell us, that in
thinking of the sorrows of others, we learn to forget our
own l
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 85
For fifty miles before one reaches Munich, the land
is flat, stale, and apparently very unprofitable, and there
is little to interest the looker-out. He sits straining his
eyes towards the horizon, eagerly longing for some sign of
the city to come in sight.
It lies very low, however, and does all it can to escape
observation ; and it is not until he is almost within its
streets that he discovers it.
86 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Che Regt of $5unbap, the 25th.
We Seek Breakfast.—I Air My German.—The Art of
Gesture.—The Intelligence of the Première Danseuse.—
Performance of English Pantomime in the Pyrenees.—Sad
Result Therefrom.—The “German Conversation ” Book.--
Its Narrow-minded View of Human Wants and Aspirations.
—Sunday in Munich,-Haſis and Gretchen.—High Life v.
Low Life.—“A Beer-Cellar.”
T Munich we left our luggage at the station, and
A went in Search of breakfast. Of course, at eight
o'clock in the morning none of the big cafés
were Open ; but at length, beside some gardens, we found
an old-fashioned looking restaurant, from which came a
pleasant Odour of coffee and hot onions; and walking
through and seating ourselves at one of the little tables,
placed out under the trees, we took the bill of fare in our
hands, and Summoned the waiter to our side.
I ordered the breakfast. I thought it would be a good
opportunity for me to try my German. I ordered coffee
and rolls as a groundwork. I got over that part of my
task very easily. With the practice I had had during the
last two days, I could have ordered coffee and rolls for forty.
Then I foraged round for luxuries, and ordered a green
salad. I had some difficulty at first in convincing the man
that it was not a boiled cabbage that I wanted, but suc-
ceeded eventually in getting that silly notion out of his head.
I still had a little German left, even after that. So I
ordered an omelette also.
“Tell him a savoury one,” said B., “ or he will be
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 87
bringing us something full of hot jam and chocolate-
creams. You know their style.”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “Of course. Yes. Let me
see. What is the German for savoury P”
“Savoury 2” mused B. “Oh ah! hum ! Bothered
if I know ! Confound the thing—I can’t think of it!”
I could not think of it either. As a matter of fact, I
never knew it. We tried the man with French. We said:
“Une omelette aux fines herbes.”
As he did not appear to understand that, we gave it
him in bad English. We twisted and turned the unfor-
tunate word “Savoury ‘’into Sounds so quaint, so sad, so
unearthly, that you would have thought they might have
touched the heart of a savage. This stoical Teuton, how-
ever, remained unmoved. Then we tried pantomime.
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88 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Pantomime is to language what marmalade, accord-
ing to the label on the pot, is to butter, “an excellent
(occasional) substitute.” But its powers as an interpreter
of thought are limited. At least, in real life they are so.
As regards a ballet, it is difficult to say what is not
explainable by pantomime. I have seen the bad man in a
ballet convey to the première danseuse by a subtle move-
ment of the left leg, together with some slight assistance
from the drum, the heartrending intelligence that the lady
she had been brought up to believe was her mother was
in reality only her aunt by marriage. But then it must
be borne in mind that the première danseuse is a lady whose
quickness of perception is altogether unique. The première
danseuse knows precisely what a gentleman means when
he twirls round forty-seven times on one leg, and then
stands on his head. The average foreigner would, in all
probability, completely misunderstand the man.
A friend of mine once, during a tour in the Pyrenees,
tried to express gratitude by means of pantomime. He
arrived late one evening at a little mountain inn, where
the people made him very welcome, and set before him
their best; and he, being hungry, appreciated their kind-
ness, and ate a most excellent Supper.
Indeed, so excellent a meal did he make, and so kind
and attentive were his hosts to him, that, after supper,
he felt he wanted to thank them, and to convey to them
some idea of how pleased and satisfied he was.
He could not explain himself in language. He only
knew enough Spanish to just ask for what he wanted—
and even to do that he had to be careful not to want
much. He had not got as far as sentiment and emotion
at that time. Accordingly he started to express himself
in action. He stood up and pointed to the empty table
DIARY OF A PILGIRIMAGE. 89
where the supper had been, then opened his mouth and
pointed down his throat. Then he patted that region of
his anatomy where, so scientific people tell us, Supper
goes to, and Smiled. $
He has a rather curious smile, has my friend. He
himself is under the impression that there is some-
thing very winning in it, though, also, as he admits,
a touch of sadness. They use it in his family ºsiſ,
for keeping the children in order.
The people of the inn seemed rather
astonished at his behaviour. They regarded % 4 #
him with troubled looks, and then gathered ºff
together among themselves and consulted
in whispers.
“I evidently have not made myself sufficiently clear to
these simple peasants,” said my friend to himself. “I
must put more vigour into this show.”
Accordingly he rubbed and patted that part of himself
to which I have previously alluded—and which, being a
modest and properly brought-up young man, nothing on
earth shall induce me to mention more explicitly—with
greater energy than ever, and added another inch or two
of smile ; and he also made various graceful movements
indicative, as he thought, of friendly feeling and content-
ment.
At length a ray of intelligence burst upon the faces of
his hosts, and they rushed to a cupboard and brought
out a small black bottle. -
“Ah that’s done it,” thought my friend. “Now they
have grasped my meaning. And they are pleased that I
am pleased, and are going to insist on my drinking a final
friendly bumper of wine with them ; the good old souls!”
They brought the bottle over, and poured out a wine-

go DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
glassful, and handed it to him, making signs that he
should drink it off quickly. -
“Ah!” said my friend to himself, as he took the glass
and raised it to the light, and winked at it wickedly, “this
is some rare old spirit peculiar to the district—some old
heirloom kept specially for the favoured guest.”
And he held the glass aloft and made a speech, in
which he wished long life and many grandchildren to the
g(ſº %/
sº sº
old couple, and a handsome husband to the daughter, and
prosperity to the whole village. They could not under-
stand him, he knew; but he thought there might be that
in his tones and gestures from which they would gather
the sense of what he was saying, and understand how
kindly he felt towards them all. When he had finished,
he put his hand upon his heart and Smiled some more,
and then tossed the liquor off at a gulp.

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 9I.
Three seconds later he discovered that it was a
stringent and trustworthy emetic that he had swallowed.
His audience had mistaken his signs of gratitude for
efforts on his part to explain to them that he was poisoned,
or, at all events, was suffering from acute and agonising
indigestion, and had done what they could to comfort
him.
The drug that they had given him was not one of
those common, cheap medicines that lose their effect
before they have been in the system half-an-hour. He
felt that it would be useless to begin another supper then,
even if he could get one, and so he went to bed a good
deal hungrier and a good deal less refreshed than when
he arrived at the inn.
Gratitude is undoubtedly a thing that should not be
attempted by the amateur pantomimist. -
“Savoury” is another. B. and I very nearly did our-
selves a serious internal injury, trying to express it. We
slaved like cab-horses at it for about five minutes, and
succeeded in conveying to the mind of the waiter that we
wanted to have a game at dominoes.
Then, like a beam of sunlight to a man lost in some
dark, winding cave, came to me the reflection that I had
in my pocket a German conversation book.
How stupid of me not to have thought of it before.
Here had we been racking our brains and our bodies,
trying to explain our wants to an uneducated German,
while, all the time, there lay to our hands a book specially
written and prepared to assist people out of the very diffi-
culty into which we had fallen—a book carefully compiled
with the express object of enabling English travellers who,
like ourselves, only spoke German in a dilettante fashion,
to make their modest requirements known throughout
92 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
the Fatherland, and to get out of the country alive and
uninjured. s
I hastily snatched the book from my pocket, and com-
menced to search for dialogues dealing with the great
food question. There were none ! -
There were lengthy and passionate “Conversations
with a laundress” about articles that I blush to remem-
ber. Some twenty pages of the volume were devoted to
silly dialogues between an extraordinarily patient shoe-
maker and one of the most irritating and constitutionally
dissatisfied customers that an unfortunate shopkeeper
could possibly be cursed with ; a customer who, after
twaddling for about forty minutes, and trying on, appa-
rently, every pair of boots in the place, calmly walks out
with : -
“Ah! well, I shall not purchase anything to-day.
Good-morning !”
The shopkeeper's reply, by-the-by, is not given. It
probably took the form of a boot-jack, accompanied by
phrases deemed useless for the purposes of the Christian
tourist.
There was really something remarkable about the
exhaustiveness of this “conversation at the shoemaker’s.”
I should think the book must have been written by some-
one who suffered from corns. I could have gone to a
German shoemaker with this book and have talked the
man's head off.
Then there were two pages of watery chatter “on meet-
ing a friend in the street”—“Good-morning, sir (or
madam).”—“I wish you a merry Christmas.”—“How is
your mother ?” As if a man who hardly knew enough
German to keep body and soul together, would want to go
about asking after the health of a foreign person's mother.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 93
There were also “conversations in the railway car-
riage,” conversations between travelling lunatics, appa-
rently, and dialogues “during the passage.”—“How do
you feel now 2° “Pretty well as yet; but I cannot say
how long it will last.”—“Oh, what waves | I now feel
very unwell and shall go below. Ask for a basin for me.”
Imagine a person who felt like that wanting to know the
German for it.
At the end of the book were German proverbs and
“Idiomatic Phrases,” by which latter would appear to be
meant in all languages, “phrases for the use of idiots”:—
“A Sparrow in the hand is better than a pigeon on the
roof.”—“Time brings roses.”—“The eagle does not catch
flies.”—“One should not buy a cat in a sack,”—as if there
were a large class of consumers who habitually did pur-
chase their cats in that way, thus enabling unscrupulous
dealers to palm off upon them an inferior cat, and whom
it was accordingly necessary to advise against the custom.
I skimmed through all this nonsense, but not a word
could I discover anywhere about a savoury omelette.
Under the head of “Eating and Drinking,” I found a short
vocabulary; but it was mainly concerned with “rasp-
berries” and “figs” and “medlars” (whatever they may
be ; I never heard of them myself), and “chestnuts,” and
Such like things, that a man hardly ever wants, even when
he is in his own country. There was plenty of oil and
vinegar, and pepper and salt and mustard in the list, but
nothing to put them on. I could have had a hard-boiled
egg, or a slice of ham; but I did not want a hard-boiled
egg, or a slice of ham. I wanted a savoury Omelette; and
that was an article of diet that the authors of this “Handy
Little Guide,” as they termed it in their preface, had
evidently never heard of.
.94 DIARY OF A PII.G RIMAGE.
Since my return home, I have, out of curiosity,
obtained three or four “English-German Dialogues’’ and
“Conversation Books,” intended to assist the English
traveller in his efforts to make himself understanded by
the German people, and I have come to the conclusion
that the work I took out with me was the most sensible
and practical of the lot.
Finding it utterly hopeless to explain ourselves to the
waiter, we let the thing go, and trusted to Providence;
and in about ten minutes the man brought us a steaming
omelette, with about a pound of Strawberry jam inside,
and powdered sugar all over the outside. We put a deal
of pepper and salt on it to try and counteract the flavour
of the sweets, but we did not really enjoy it even then.
After breakfast we got a time-table, and looked out for
a train to Ober-Ammergau. I found one which started
at 3.Io. It seemed a very nice train indeed ; it did not
stop anywhere. The railway authorities themselves were
evidently very proud of it, and had printed particulars of
it in extra thick type. We decided to patronise it.
To pass away the time, we strolled about the city.
Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble
streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and
of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an
atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it.
There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along
its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops
are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it
was busier than usual, and its promenades were thronged
with citizens and country folk in holiday attire, among
whom the Southern peasants, wearing their quaint,
centuries-old costume, stood out in picturesque relief.
Fashion, in its world-wide Crusade against variety and
DIARY OF A PII.G RIMAGE.
95
st with form and colour, has recoiled,
defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses
of Bavaria.
its bitter conte
as Sunday or gala-day comes round,
3.
Still
the broad-shouldered, sunburnt shepherd of the Ober-
land dons his gay green-embroidered jacket over his
breeches with a girdle
feather-crowned hat upon
with bare legs, shod in mighty
fastens his short knee
5
Snowy shirt
, claps his high,
round his waist
5
his waving curls, and
boots, strides over the hill-sides to his Gretchen's door.
2
you may be sure, ready dressed
for him,
Š
She is waitin
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96 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
and a very sweet old-world picture she makes, standing
beneath the great overhanging gables of the wooden
châlet. She, too, favours the national green; but, as
relief, there is no lack of bonny red ribbons to flutter in
the wind, and, underneath the ornamented skirt, peeps
out a bright-hued petticoat. Around her ample breast
she wears a dark tight-fitting bodice, laced down the
front. (I think this garment is called a stomacher, but I
am not sure, as I have never liked to ask.) Her square
shoulders are covered with the whitest of white linen.
Her sleeves are also white; and being very full, and of
some soft lawnlike material, suggest the idea of folded
wings. Upon her flaxen hair is perched a saucy round
green hat. The buckles of her dainty shoes, the big eyes
in her pretty face, are all four very bright. One feels
one would like much to change places for the day with
Hans.
Arm-in-arm, looking like some china, but exceedingly
substantial china, shepherd and shepherdess, they
descend upon the town. One rubs one's eyes and stares
after them as they pass. They seem to have stepped
from the pictured pages of one of those old story-books
that we learnt to love, sitting beside the high brass guard
that kept ourselves and the nursery-fire from doing each
other any serious injury, in the days when the world was
much bigger than it is now, and much more real and
interesting.
Munich and the country round about it make a great
exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning,
trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers
pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good
and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood
and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 97
We went into one or two of the beer-halls—not into
the swell cafés, crowded with tourists and Munich masher-
dom, but into the low-ceilinged, smoke-grimed cellars
where the life of the people is to be seen.
The ungenteel people in a country are so much more
interesting than the gentlefolks. One lady or gentleman
is painfully like every other lady or gentleman. There is
so little individuality, so little character, among the upper
circles of the world. They talk like each other, they
think and act like each other, they dress like each other,
and look very much like each other. We gentlefolks only
play at living. We have our rules and regulations for the
game, which must not be infringed. Our unwritten guide-
books direct us what to do and what to say at each turn
of the meaningless sport.
To those at the bottom of the social pyramid, how-
ever, who stand with their feet upon the earth, Nature is
not a curious phenomenon to be looked down at and
studied, but a living force to be obeyed. They front
grim, naked Life, face to face, and wrestle with it through
the darkness; and, as did the angel that strove with
Jacob, it leaves its stamp upon them.
There is only one type of a gentleman. There are
five hundred types of men and women. That is why I
always seek out and frequent the places where the
common people congregate, in preference to the haunts of
respectability. I have to be continually explaining all
this to my friends, to account to them for what they call
my love of low life.
With a mug of beer before me, and a pipe in my
mouth, I could sit for hours contentedly, and watch the
life that ebbs and flows into and out of these old ale-
kitchens.
7 *
98 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
The brawny peasant lads bring in their lasses to treat
them to the beloved nectar of Munich, together with a
huge onion. How they enjoy themselves | What splendid
jokes they have How they laugh and roar and sing !
At one table sit four old fellows, playing cards. How full
of character is each gnarled face | One is eager, quick,
vehement. How his eyes dance | You can read his
every thought upon his face. You know when he is going
to dash down the king with a shout of triumph on the
queen. His neighbour looks calm, slow, and dogged, but
wears a confident expression. The game proceeds, and
you watch and wait for him to play the winning cards
that you feel sure he holds. He must intend to win.
Victory is written in his face. No 1 he loses. A seven
was the highest card in his hand. Everyone turns to him,
surprised. He laughs A difficult man to deal with,
that, in other matters besides cards. A man whose
thoughts lie a good deal below his skin.
Opposite, a cross-looking old woman clamours for
sausages, gets them, and seems crosser than ever. She
scowls round on everyone, with a malignant expression
that is quite terrifying. A small dog comes and sits
down in front of her, and grins at her. Still, with the
same savage expression of hatred towards all living things,
she feeds him with Sausage at the end of a fork, regarding
him all the while with an aspect of such concentrated
dislike, that one wonders it does not interfere with his
digestion. In a corner, a stout old woman talks inces-
santly to a solemn-looking man, who sits silent and
drinks steadily. It is evident that he can stand her con-
versation just so long as he has a mug of beer in front of
him. He has brought her in here to give her a treat. He will
let her have her talk out while he drinks. Heavens !
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 99
how she does talk | She talks without movement, with-
out expression; her voice never varies, it flows on, and on,
and on, like a great resistless river. Four young artisans
come clamping along in their hob-nailed boots, and
seating themselves at one of the rude wooden
tables, call for beer. With their arms round the , ..."
waist of the utterly in- 2 (T3)
different Fraulein, they --> --> .
shout and laugh and *; > ~~ §º:
sing. Nearly all the ſº =ſ, ſº
young folks here are k º § ſº
laughing—look. §§ *ś --
ing forward to §º %;
life. All the old zañ º 2
folks are talking, U->
remembering it.
What grand pictures
some of these old, seared
faces round us would
make, if a man could
only paint them—paint
all that is in them, all the
tragedy and comedy that the great playright, Life, has
written upon the withered skins ! Joys and sorrows,
Sordid hopes and fears, child-like strivings to be good,
mean selfishness and grand unselfishness, have helped
to fashion these old wrinkled faces. The curves of
cunning and kindliness lurk round these fading eyes. The
lines of greed hover about these bloodless lips, that have
so often been tight-pressed in patient heroism.
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IOG) DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
$5unbap, 25th–Continueo,
We Dine.—A Curious Dish.-‘‘A Feeling of Sadness
Comes O'er Me.”—The German Cigar.—The Handsomest
Match in Europe.—“How Easy 'tis for Friends to Drift
Apart,” especially in a Place like Munich Railway Station.
—The Victim of Fate.—A Faithful Bradshaw.—Among the
Mountains.—Prince and Pauper.—A Modern Romance.—
Arrival at Oberau.-Wise and Foolish Pilgrims.--An Inter-
esting Drive.—Ettal and its Monastery.—We Reach the Goal
of our Pilgrimage.
T one o'clock we turned into a restaurant for dinner.
A The Germans themselves always dine in the
middle of the day, and a very substantial meal
they make of it. At the hotels frequented by tourists
table d'hôte is, during the season, fixed for about six or
seven, but this is only done to meet the views of foreign
CustomerS.
I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that
the information will prove exciting to the reader, but
because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in
Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.
I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of
cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese depart-
ment of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,”
an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined
to sample it.
It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an un-
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. IOI
healthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that
had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more
than anything else. It even tasted like putty—at least,
like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I
am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing
was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way
round the plate were piled articles that I had never before
seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there
again. There was a little heap of split-peas, three or four
remarkably small potatoes—at least, I suppose they were
potatoes; if not, they were pea-nuts boiled soft, some
caraway-seeds, a very young-looking fish, apparently of
the stickleback breed, and some red paint. It was quite
a little dinner all to itself.
What the red paint was for, I could not understand.
B. thought that it was put there for suicidal purposes.
His idea was that the customer, after eating all the other
things in the plate, would wish he were dead, and that
the restaurant people, knowing this, had thoughtfully
provided him with red paint for one, so that he could
poison himself off and get out of his misery.
I thought, after swallowing the first mouthful, that I
would not eat any more of this cheese. Then it occurred
to me that it was a pity to waste it after having ordered
it, and, besides, I might get to like it before I had finished.
The taste for most of the good things of this world has to
be acquired. I can remember the time when I did not
like beer.
So I mixed up everything on the plate all together—
made a sort of salad of it, in fact—and ate it with a
spoon. A more disagreeable dish I have never tasted
since the days when I used to do Willie Evans's “dags.”
by walking twice through a sewer, and was subsequently,
IO2 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
on returning home, promptly put to bed, and made to eat
brimstone and treacle.
I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done
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in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with
painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number
of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and
reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the
injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things
that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the
people I had known who were now dead, and whom I
should never see again ; of all the girls that I had loved,
who were now married to other fellows, while I did not
even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our
earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it
is, and how full of Sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of
the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness
of all things.
I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be






DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. Io3
wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way.
What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling—being
jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncom-
fortable hotels 2
B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the begin-
ning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian
Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad
to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued.
He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.
B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not
want to Smoke. Smoking seemed to me, just then, a
foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B. :
“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month
is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the
worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us
then that we smoked these cigars to-day ?”
B. said: -
“Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if
you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so
much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my
sake.”
To humour him, I lit up.
I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when
you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble.
But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear
at six a halfpenny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they
might serve for greens; but as smoking material they
are not worth the match with which you light them,
especially not if the match be a German one. The
German match is quite a high art work. It has a yellow
head and a magenta or green stem, and can certainly lay
claim to being the handsomest match in Europe.
We Smoked a good many penny cigars during our stay
IO4 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
in Germany, and that we were none the worse for doing
So I consider as proof of our splendid physique and con-
stitution. I think the German cigar test might, with
reason, be adopted by life insurance offices.—Question:
“Are you at present, and have you always been, of robust
health P” Answer: “I have smoked a German cigar, and
still live.” Life accepted.
Towards three o’clock we worked our way round to
the station, and began looking for our train. We hunted
all over the place, but could not find it anywhere. The
central station at Munich is an enormous building, and a
perfect maze of passages and halls and corridors. It is
much easier to lose oneself in it, than to find anything in
it one may happen to want. Together and separately B.
and I lost ourselves and each other some twenty-four
times. For about half an hour we seemed to be doing
nothing else but rushing up and down the station looking
for each other, suddenly finding each other, and saying,
“Why, where the dickens have you been 2 I have been
hunting for you everywhere. Don’t go away like that,”
and then immediately losing each other again.
And what was so extraordinary about the matter was
that every time, after losing each other, we invariably met
again—when we did meet—outside the door of the third-
class refreshment-room.
We came at length to regard the door of the third-class
refreshment-room as “home,” and to feel a thrill of joy
when, in the course of our weary wanderings through far-
off waiting-rooms and lost-luggage bureaus and lamp
depôts, we saw its old familiar handle shining in the
distance, and knew that there, beside it, we should find
our loved and lost one.
When any very long time elapsed without our coming
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. IO5
across it, we would go up to one of the officials, and ask
to be directed to it.
“Please can you tell me,” we would say, “the nearest
way to the door of the third-class refreshment-room 2 °
When three o'clock came, and still we had not found
the 3. IO train, we became quite anxious about the poor
thing, and made inquiries concerning it.
“The 3.IO train to Ober-Ammergau,” they said. “Oh,
we’ve not thought about that yet.”
“Haven’t thought about it !” we exclaimed indignantly.
“Well, do for heaven’s sake wake up a bit. It is 3.5 now !”
“Yes,” they answered, “3.5 in the afternoon; the 3.Io
is a night train. Don't you see it’s printed in thick type 2
All the trains between six in the evening and six in the
morning are printed in fat figures, and the day trains in
thin. You have got plenty of time. Look round after
Supper.”
I do believe I am the most unfortunate man at a time-
table that ever was born. I do not think it can be stupidity;
for if it were mere stupidity, I should occasionally, now
and then, when I was feeling well, not make a mistake.
It must be fate.
If there is one train out of forty that goes on “Satur-
days only ” to some place I want to get to, that is the
train I select to travel by on a Friday. On Saturday
morning I get up at six, Swallow a hasty breakfast, and
rush off to catch a return train that goes on every day in
the week “except Saturdays.”
I go to London, Brighton and South Coast Railway-
stations and clamour for South-Eastern trains. On Bank
Holidays I forget it is Bank Holiday, and go and sit on
draughty platforms for hours, waiting for trains that do
not run on Bank Holidays. .
IO6 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
To add to my misfortunes, I am the miserable possessor
of a demon time-table that I cannot get rid of, a Bradshaw
for August, 1887. Regularly, on the first of each month,
I buy and bring home with me a new Bradshaw and a new
A.B.C. What becomes of them after the second of the
month, I do not know. After the second of the month, I
never see either of them again. What their fate is, I can
only guess. In their place is left, to mislead me, this
\, \ y wretched old 1887 corpse.
SN, For three years I have been
*) trying to escape from it, but it will
not leave me. I have
thrown it out of the
window, and it has fallen
on people's heads, and
those people have picked
it up and smoothed it
out, and brought it back to the
house, and members of my family
—“friends” they call themselves
—people of my own flesh and
blood—have thanked them and
taken it in again
I have kicked it into a dozen
pieces, and kicked the pieces all
the way downstairs and out into the garden, and persons
—persons, mind you, who will not sew a button on the
back of my shirt to save me from madness—have collected
the pieces and stitched them carefully together, and made
the book look as good as new, and put it back in my
study
It has acquired the secret of perpetual youth, has this
time-table. Other time-tables that I buy become dissi-
*A. . .






IDIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. Io.7
pated-looking wrecks in about a week. This book looks
as fresh and new and clean as it did on the day when it
first lured me into purchasing it. There is nothing about
its appearance to suggest to the casual observer that it is
not this month's Bradshaw. Its evident aim and object
in life is to deceive people into the idea that it is this
month’s Bradshaw.
It is undermining my moral character, this book is.
It is responsible for at least ten per cent. of the bad
language that I use every year. It leads me into drink
and gambling. I am continually finding myself with some
three or four hours to wait at dismal provincial railway
stations. I read all the advertisements on both platforms,
and then I get wild and reckless, and plunge into the
railway hotel and play billiards with the landlord for
threes of Scotch.
I intend to have that Bradshaw put into my coffin with
me when I am buried, so that I can show it to the record-

IO8 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
ing angel and explain matters. I expect to obtain a dis-
count of at least five-and-twenty per cent. off my bill of
crimes for that Bradshaw.
The 3. IO train in the morning was, of course, too late
for us. It would not get us to Ober-Ammergau until
about 9 a.m. There was a train leaving at 7.30 (I let B.
find out this) by which we might reach the village some
time during the night, if only we could get a conveyance
from Oberau, the nearest railway-station. Accordingly,
we telegraphed to Cook’s agent, who was at Ober-
Ammergau (we all of us sneer at Mr. Cook and Mr. Gaze,
and such-like gentlemen, who kindly conduct travellers
that cannot conduct themselves properly, when we are at
home; but I notice most of us appeal, on the quiet, to
one or the other of them, the moment we want to move
abroad), to try and send a carriage to meet us by that
train; and then went to an hotel, and turned into bed
until it was time to start.
We had another grand railway-ride from Munich to
Oberau. We passed by the beautiful lake of Starnberg
just as the sun was setting and gilding with gold the little
villages and pleasant villas that lie around its shores. It
was in the lake of Starnberg, near the lordly pleasure-
house that he had built for himself in that fair vale, that
poor màd Ludwig, the late King of Bavaria, drowned
himself. Poor King ! Fate gave him everything calcu-
lated to make a man happy, excepting one thing, and that
was the power of being happy. Fate has a mania for
striking balances. I knew a little shoeblack once who
used to follow his profession at the corner of Westminster
Bridge. Fate gave him an average of sixpence a day to
live upon and provide himself with luxuries; but she also
gave him a power of enjoying that kept him jolly all day
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. Io9
long. He could buy as much enjoyment for a penny as
the average man could for a ten-pound note—more, I
almost think. He did not know he was badly off, any
more than King Ludwig knew he was well off; and all day
long he laughed and played, and worked a little—not more
than he could help—and ate and drank, and gambled.
The last time I saw him was in St. Thomas's Hospital,
into which he had got himself, owing to his fatal passion
for walking along outside the stone coping of Westminster
Bridge. He thought it was “prime,” being in the hos-
pital, and told me that he was living like a fighting-cock,
and that he did not mean to go out sooner than he could
help. I asked him if he were not in pain, and he said
“Yes,” when he “thought about it.”
Poor little chap! he only managed to live like a “fighting-
cock” for three days more. Then he died, cheerful up to the
last, so they told me, like the plucky little English game-
cock he was. He could not have been more than twelve
years old when he crowed his last. It had been a short
life for him, but a very merry one.
Now, if only this little beggar and poor old Ludwig
could have gone into partnership, and so have shared
between them the shoeblack's power of enjoying and the
king's stock of enjoyments, what a good thing it would
have been for both of them—especially for King Ludwig.
He would never have thought of drowning himself then—
life would have been too delightful.
But that would not have suited Fate. She loves to
laugh at men, and to make of life a paradox. To the one,
she played ravishing strains, having first taken the precau-
tion to make him stone-deaf. To the other, she piped a
few poor notes on a cracked tin-whistle, and he thought it
was music, and danced
IIO DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
A few years later on, at the very same spot where King
Ludwig threw back to the gods their gift of life, a pair of
somewhat foolish young lovers ended their disappoint-
ments, and, finding they could not be wedded together in
life, wedded themselves together in death. Their story,
duly reported in the newspapers as an item of foreign
intelligence, read more like some old Rhine legend than
the record of a real occurrence in this prosaic nineteenth
century.
He was a German Count, if I remember rightly, and,
like most German Counts, had not much money; and her
father, as fathers will when proposed to by impecunious
would-be sons-in-law, refused his consent. The Count
then went abroad to try and make, or at all events im-
prove, his fortune. He went to America, and there he
prospered. In a year or two he came back, tolerably rich
—to find, however, that he was too late. His lady, per-
suaded of his death, had been urged into a marriage with
a rich somebody else. In ordinary life, of course, the
man would have contented himself with continuing to
make love to the lady, leaving the rich somebody else
to pay for her keep. This young couple, however, a little
lighter headed, or a little deeper hearted than the most of
us, whichever it may have been, and angry at the mocking
laughter with which the air around them seemed filled,
went down one stormy night together to the lake, and
sobered droll Fate for an instant by turning her grim
comedy into a somewhat grimmer tragedy.
Soon after losing sight of Starnberg's placid waters,
we plunged into the gloom of the mountains and began a
long, winding climb among their hidden recesses. At
times, shrieking as if in terror, we passed some ghostly
hamlet, standing out white and silent in the moonlight
DIARY OF ' A PILGRIMAGE. III
---
against the shadowy hills; and, now and then, a dark,
still lake, or mountain torrent whose foaming waters fell
in a long white streak across the blackness of the
night. -
We passed by Murnau in the valley of the Dragon
a little town which possessed a Passion Play of its own in
the olden times, and which, until a few years ago, when the
railway-line was pushed forward to Partenkirchen, was the
nearest station to Ober-Ammergau. It was a tolerably
steep climb up the road from Murnau, over Mount Ettal, to
Ammergau—SO steep, indeed, that One stout pilgrim, not
many years ago, died from the exertion while walking up.
Sturdy-legged mountaineer and pulpy citizen both had to
clamber up side by side, for no horses could do more than
drag behind them the empty vehicle.
Every season, however, sees the European tourist
more and more pampered, and the difficulties and conse-
quent pleasure and interest of his journey more and more
curtailed and spoilt. In a few years time, he will be
packed in cotton-wool in his own back-parlour, labelled
for the place he wants to go to, and unpagked and taken
out when he gets there. The railway now carries him
round Mount Ettal to Oberau, from which little village a
tolerably easy road, as mountain roadways go, of about
four or five English miles takes him up to the valley of
the Ammer. -
It was midnight when our train landed us at Oberau
station; but the place was far more busy and stirring than
on ordinary occasions it is at mid-day. Crowds of tourists
and pilgrims thronged the little hotel, wondering, as also
did the landlord, where they were all going to sleep; and
wondering still more, though this latter consideration
evidently did not trouble their host, how they were
8
II2 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGEs
going to get up to Ober-Ammergau in the morning in time
for the play, which always begins at 8 a.m. :
Some were engaging carriages at fabulous prices to call
for them at five; and others, who could not secure car-
riages, and who had determined to walk, were instructing
worried waiters to wake them at 2.30, and ordering break-
fast for a quarter-past three sharp. (I had no idea there
were such times in the morning !)
We were fortunate enough to find our landlord, a worthy
farmer, waiting for us with a tumble-down conveyance, in
appearance something between a circus-chariot and a
bath-chair, drawn by a couple of powerful-looking horses;
and in this, after a spirited skirmish between our driver
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and a mob of twenty or so tourists, who pretended to
mistake the affair for an omnibus, and who would have
clambered into it and swamped it, we drove away.
Higher and higher we climbed, and grander and
grander towered the frowning moon-bathed mountains







DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. II3
round us, and chillier and chillier grew the air. For
most of the way we crawled along, the horses tugging
us from side to side of the steep road; but, wherever our
coachman could vary the monotony of the pace by a
stretch-gallop—as, for instance, down the precipitous
descents that occasionally followed upon some extra long
and toil some --~~~~~~~~ -->
a scent — he
though tſully
did so. A t
such times the
drive became
really quite ex-
citing, and all
our weariness
was forgotten. ... - -
The steeper the descent, the faster, of course, we
could go. The rougher the road, the more anxious the
horses seemed to be to get over it quickly. During the
gallop, B. and I enjoyed, in a condensed form, all the
advantages usually derived from crossing the Channel on
a stormy day, riding on a switchback railway, and being
tossed in a blanket—a hard, nobbly blanket, full of nasty
corners and sharp edges. I should never have thought
that so many different sensations could have been
obtained from one machine !
About half-way up we passed Ettal, at the entrance to
the Valley of the Ammer. The great white temple, stand-
ing, surrounded by its little village, high up amid the
mountain solitudes, is a famous place of pilgrimage
among devout Catholics. Many hundreds of years ago,
one of the early Bavarian kings built here a monastery as
a shrine for a miraculous image of the Virgin that had

8 *
II4 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
been sent down to him from Heaven to help him when,
in a foreign land, he had stood sore in need, encompassed
by his enemies. Maybe the stout arms and hearts of his
Bavarian friends were of some service in the crisis also ;
but the living helpers were forgotten. The old church and
monastery, which latter was a sort of ancient Chelsea
Hospital for decayed knights, was destroyed one terrible
night some hundred and fifty years ago by a flash of light-
ning; but the wonder-working image was rescued unhurt,
and may still be seen and worshipped beneath the dome
of the present much less imposing church which has been
reared upon the ruins of its ancestor.
The monastery, which was also rebuilt at the same
time, now serves the more useful purpose of a brewery.
From Ettal the road is comparatively level, and, jolt-
ing swiftly over it, we soon reached Ober-Ammergau.
Lights were passing to and fro behind the many windows
of the square stone houses, and dark, strange-looking
figures were moving about the streets, busy with prepara-
tions for the great business that would commence with the
dawn.
We rattled noisily through the village, our driver roar-
ing out “Good-night !” to every one he passed in a voice
sufficient to wake up everybody who might be sleeping
within a mile, charged light-heartedly round half-a-dozen
corners, trotted down the centre path of somebody's front
garden, Squeezed our way through a gate, and drew up at
an open door, through which the streaming light poured
out upon two tall, comely lasses, our host’s daughters,
who were standing waiting for us in the porch. They led
us into a large, comfortably furnished room, where a
tempting supper of hot veal-chops (they seem to live on
veal in Germany) and white wine was standing ready.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. II5
Under ordinary circumstances I should have been afraid
that such a supper would cause me to be more eager for
change and movement during the ensuing six hours than
for sleep; but I felt that to-night it would take a dozen
half-baked firebricks to keep me awake five seconds after
I had got my head on the pillow—or what they call a
pillow in Germany; and so, without hesitation, I made a
very satisfactory meal.
After supper our host escorted us to our bedroom,
an airy apartment adorned with various highly-coloured
wood-carvings of a pious but somewhat ghastly character,
calculated, I should say, to exercise a disturbing influence
upon the night's rest of a nervous or sensitive person. -
“Mind that we are called at proper time in the morn-
ing,” said B. to the man. “We don’t want to wake up
at four o'clock in the afternoon and find that we have
missed the play, after coming all this way to see it.”
“Oh that will be all right,” answered the old fellow.
“You won’t get much chance of oversleeping yourself. We
shall all be up and about, and the whole village stirring,
before five; and besides,
the band will be playing
at six just beneath the
window here, and the
cannon on the Kofel
goes off at 3 3
“Look here,” I g
interrupted, “that \
won’t do for me,
you know. Don't
you think that I
am going to be //j/4}\\ %.
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II6 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
riots outside the window, and brass-band contests, and
earthquakes, and explosions, and those sort of things,
because it can’t be done that way. Somebody’s got to
come into this room and haul me out of bed, and sit
down on the bed and see that I don’t get into it again,
and that I don’t go to sleep on the floor. That will be
the way to get me up to-morrow morning. Don’t let’s
have any nonsense about stirring villages and guns and
German bands. I know what all that will end in, my
going back to England without seeing the show. I
want to be roused in the morning, not lulled off to sleep
again.” -
B. translated the essential portions of this speech to
the man, and he laughed and promised upon his sacred
word of honour that he would come up himself and have
us both out; and as he was a stalwart and determined-
looking man, I felt satisfied, and wished him “Good-night,”
and made haste to get off my boots before I fell asleep.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 117
Cuegoap, the 27th.
}
A Pleasant Morning.—What can one Say about the
Passion Play 2–B. Lectures.—Unreliable Description of
Ober-Ammergau.-Exaggerated Description of its Weather.—
Possibly Untruthful Account of how the Passion Play came to
be Played.—A Good Face.—The Cultured Schoolboy and his
Ignorant Relations.
* AM lying in bed, or, to speak more truthfully, I
| am sitting up on a green Satin, lace-covered pillow,
writing these notes. A green satin, lace-covered
bed is on the floor beside me. It is about eleven o’clock
in the morning. B. is sitting up in his bed a few feet off,
smoking a pipe. We have just finished a light repast of
—what do you think? you will never guess—coffee and
rolls. We intend to put the week straight by stopping in
bed all day, at all events until the evening. Two English
ladies occupy the bedroom next to ours. They seem to
have made up their minds to also stay upstairs all day.
We can hear them walking about their room, muttering.
They have been doing this for the last three-quarters of
an hour. They seem troubled about something.
It is very pleasant here. An overflow performance is
being given in the theatre to-day for the benefit of those
people who could not gain admittance yesterday, and,
through the open windows, we can hear the rhythmic chant
of the chorus. Mellowed by the distance, the wailing
cadence of the plaintive songs, mingled with the shrill
II8 IDIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Haydnistic strains of the orchestra, falls with a mournful
Sweetness On Our ears.
We ourselves saw the play yesterday, and we are now
discussing it. I am explaining to B. the difficulty I ex-
perience in writing an account of it for my diary. I tell
him that I really do not know what to say about it.
He smokes for a while in silence, and then, taking the
pipe from his lips, he says:
“Does it matter very much what you say about it P”
I find much relief in that thought. It at once lifts
from my shoulders the oppressive feeling of responsibility
that was weighing me down. After all, what does it
matter what I say ? What does it matter what any of us
says about anything 2 Nobody takes much notice of it,
luckily for everybody. This reflection must be of great
comfort to editors and critics. A conscientious man who
really felt that his words would carry weight and influence
with them would be almost afraid to speak at all. It is the
man who knows that it will not make an ounce of differ-
ence to anyone what he says, that can grow eloquent and
vehement and positive. It will not make any difference
to anybody or anything what I say about the Ober-
Ammergau Passion Play. So I shall just say what I want
to.
But what do I want to say ? What can I say that has
not been said, and said much better, already ? (An author
must always pretend to think that every other author
writes better than he himself does. He does not really
think so, you know, but it looks well to talk as though he
did.) What can I say that the reader does not know, or
that, not knowing, he cares to know 2 It is easy enough
to talk about nothing, like I have been doing in this diary
hitherto. . It is when one is confronted with the task of
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. II9
writing about something, that one wishes one were a
respectable well-to-do sweep—a sweep with a comfortable
business of his own, and a pony—instead of an author.
B. says:
“Well, why not begin by describing Ober-Ammergau.”
I say it has been described so often. He says: *
“So has the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race and
the Derby Day, but people go on describing them all the
same, and apparently find other people to read their
descriptions. Say that the little village, clustered round
its mosque-domed church, nestles in the centre of a valley,
surrounded by great fir-robed hills, which stand, with the
cross-crowned Kofel for their chief, like stern, strong
Sentinels guarding its old-world peace from the din and
clamour of the outer world. Describe how the square,
whitewashed houses are sheltered beneath great over-
hanging gables, and are encircled by carved wooden
balconies and verandahs, where, in the cool of the evening,
peasant wood-carver and peasant farmer sit to smoke the
long Bavarian pipe, and chat about the cattle and the
Passion Play and village politics; and how, in gaudy
colours above the porch, are painted glowing figures of
saints and virgins and such-like good folk, which the rains
have Sadly mutilated, so that a legless angel on one side
of the road looks dejectedly across at a headless Madonna
on the other, while at an exposed corner some unfortunate
saint, more cruelly dealt with by the weather than he ever
was even by the heathen, has been deprived of everything
that he could call his own, with the exception of half a
head and a pair of extra-sized feet.
“Explain how all the houses are numbered according
to the date they were built, so that number sixteen comes
next to number forty-seven, and there is no number one
I2O DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
because it has been pulled down. Tell how unsophisticated
visitors, informed that their lodgings are at number fifty-
three, go wandering for days and days round fifty-two,
under the not unreasonable impression that their house
must be next door, though, as a matter of fact, it is half a
mile off at the other end of the village, and are discovered
one Sunny morning, sitting on the doorstep of number
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eighteen, singing pathetic snatches of nursery rhymes,
and trying to plait their toes into door-mats, and are
taken up and carried away screaming, to end their lives
in the madhouse at Munich.
“Talk about the weather. People who have stayed
here for any length of time tell me that it rains at Ober-
Ammergau three days out of every four, the reason that
it does not rain on the fourth day being that every fourth
day is set apart for a deluge. They tell me, also, that
while it will be pouring with rain just in the village the
sun will be shining brightly all round about, and that the
villagers, when the water begins to come in through their
roofs, snatch up their children and hurry off to the nearest
field, where they sit and wait until the storm is over.”




























DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I2][
“Do you believe them—the persons that you say tell
you these tales P’’ I ask. -
“Personally I do not,” he replies. “I think people
exaggerate to me because I look young and innocent, but
no doubt there is a groundwork of truth in their state-
ments. I have myself left Ober-Ammergau under a
steady drenching rain, and found a cloudless sky the other
side of the Kofel. -
“Then,” he continues, “you can comment upon the
hardihood of the Bavarian peasant. How he or she walks
about bare-headed and bare-footed through the fiercest
showers, and seems to find the rain only pleasantly cool-
ing. How, during the performance of the Passion Play,
they act and sing and stand about upon the uncovered
stage without taking the slightest notice of the downpour
of water that is soaking their robes and running from their
streaming hair, to make great pools upon the boards; and
how the audience, in the cheaper, unroofed portion of the
theatre, sit with equal stoicism, watching them, no one
ever dreaming even of putting up an umbrella—or, if he
does dream of doing so, experiencing a very rude awaken-
ing from the sticks of those behind.”
B. stops to relight his pipe at this point, and I hear
the two ladies in the next room fidgeting about and mut-
tering worse than ever. It seems to me they are listening
at the door (our room and theirs are connected by a door);
I do wish that they would either get into bed again or else
go downstairs. They worry me.
“And what shall I say after I have said all that ?” I
ask B. when at last he has started his pipe again.
+. “Oh well, after that,” he replies, “you can give
the history of the Passion Play; how it came to be
played.” *
&
I22 DIARY OF A PILG RIMAGE.
“Oh, but so many people have done that already,” I
say again.
“So much the better for you,” is his reply. “Having
previously heard precisely the same story from half a dozen
other sources, the public will be tempted to believe you
when you repeat the account. Tell them that during the
thirty years' war a terrible plague (as if half a dozen
different armies, marching up and down their country,
fighting each other about the Lord only knows what, and
living on them while doing it, was not plague enough)
swept over Bavaria, devastating each town and hamlet.
Of all the highland villages, Ober-Ammergau, by means
of a strictly enforced quarantine, alone kept, for a while,
the black foe at bay. No soul was allowed to leave the
village; no living thing to enter it.
“But one dark night Caspar Schuchler, an inhabitant
of Ober-Ammergau, who had been away working in the
plague-stricken neighbouring village of Eschenlohe, creep-
ing low on his belly, passed the drowsy sentinels, and
gained his home, and saw what for many a day he had
been hungering for—a sight of his wife and bairns. It
was a selfish act to do, and he and his fellow-villagers
paid dearly for it. Three days after he had entered his
house he and all his family lay dead, and the plague was
raging through the valley, and nothing seemed able to
stay its course.
“When human means fail, we feel it is only fair to give
Heaven a chance. The good people who dwelt by the
side of the Ammer vowed that, if the plague left them, they
would, every ten years, perform a Passion Play. The celes-
tial powers seem to have at Once closed with this offer.
The plague disappeared as if by magic, and every recurring
tenth year since, the Ober-Ammergauites have kept their
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I23
promise and played their Passion Play. They act it to this
day as a pious observance. Before each performance all
the characters gather together on the stage around their
pastor, and kneeling, pray for a blessing upon the work
then about to commence. The profits that are made,
after paying the performers a wage that just compensates
them for their loss of time—wood-carver Maier, who plays
the Christ, only receives about fifty pounds for the whole
of the thirty or so performances given during the season,
to say nothing of the winter's rehearsals—is put aside,
part for the temporal benefit of the community, and the
rest for the benefit of the Church. From burgomaster
down to shepherd lad, from the Mary and the Jesus down
to the meanest super, all work for the love of their re-
ligion, not for money. Each one feels that he is helping
forward the cause of Christianity.”
“And I could also speak,” I add, “ of grand old
Daisenberger, the gentle, simple old priest, ‘the father
of the valley,’ who now lies in silence among his children
that he loved so well. It was he, you know, that shaped
the rude burlesque of a coarser age into the impressive
reverential drama that we saw yesterday. That is a por-
trait of him over the bed. What a plain, homely, good
face it is! How pleasant, how helpful it is to come across
a good face now and then l I do not mean a sainted face,
suggestive of stained glass and marble tombs, but a
rugged human face that has had the grit, and rain, and
Sunshine of life rubbed into it, and that has gained its
expression, not by looking up with longing at the stars,
but by looking down with eyes full of laughter and love
at the human things around it.” -
“Yes,” assented B. “You can put in that if you like.
There is no harm in it. And then you can go on to speak
I24 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
of the play itself, and give your impressions concerning
it. Never mind their being silly. They will be all the
better for that. Silly remarks are generally more interest-
ing than sensible ones.”
“But what is the use of saying anything about it at
all?” I urge. “The merest schoolboy must know all
about the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play by this time.”
“What has that to do with you?” answers B. “You
are not writing for cultured schoolboys. You are writing
for mere simple men and women. They will be glad of
a little information on the subject, and then when the
schoolboy comes home for his holiday they will be able,
so far as this topic, at all events, is concerned, to con-
verse with him on his own level and not appear stupid.
“Come,” he says, kindly, trying to lead me on, “what
did you think about it 2 ”
“Well,” I reply, after musing for a while, “I think
that a play of eighteen acts and some forty scenes, which
commences at eight o'clock in the morning, and continues,
with an interval of an hour and a half for dinner, until
six o'clock in the evening, is too long. I think the piece
wants cutting. About a third of it is impressive and
moving, and what the earnest student of the drama at
home is for ever demanding that a play should be—namely,
elevating; but I consider that the other two-thirds are
tiresome.”
“Quite so,” answers B. “But then we must re-
member that the performance is not intended as an
entertainment, but as a religious service. To criticise
any part of it as uninteresting, is like saying that half the
Bible might very well have been omitted, and that the
whole story could have been told in a third of the
space,”
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I25
Cuesoap, the 27th–continueb.
We Talk On.—An Argument.—The Story that Transformed
the World. -
& 6 ND now, as to the right or wrong of the perform-
A. ance as a whole. Do you See any objection to
the play from a religious point of view 2 ”
“No,” I reply, “I do not; nor do I understand how
anybody else, and least of all a really believing Christian,
can either. To argue as some do, that Christianity
should be treated as a sacred mystery, is to argue against
the whole scheme of Christianity. It was Christ himself
that rent the veil of the Temple, and brought religion
down into the streets and market-places of the world.
Christ was a common man. He lived a common life,
among common men and women. He died a common
death. His own methods of teaching were what a Satur-
day reviewer, had he to deal with the case, would un-
doubtedly term vulgar. The roots of Christianity are
planted deep down in the very soil of life, amid all that is
commonplace, and mean, and petty, and every-day. Its
strength lies in its simplicity, its homely humanness. It
has spread itself through the world by speaking to the
hearts, rather than to the heads, of men. If it is still to
live and grow, it must be helped along by such methods
I26 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
as these peasant players of Ober-Ammergau employ, not
by high-class essays and the learned discussions of the
cultured.
“The crowded audience that sat beside us in the
theatre yesterday saw Christ of Nazareth nearer than any
book, however inspired, could bring him to them ; clearer
than any words, however eloquent, could show him.
They saw the sorrow of his patient face. They heard
his deep tones calling to them. They saw him in the
hour of his so-called triumph, wending his way through
the narrow streets of Jerusalem, the multitude that
thronged round him waving their branches of green
palms and shouting loud hosannas.”
“What a poor scene of triumph ! — a poor-clad,
pale-faced man, mounted upon the back of a shuffling,
unwilling little grey donkey, passing slowly through
the byways of a city, busy upon other things. Beside
him, a little band of worn, anxious men, clad in thread-
bare garments—fishermen, petty clerks, and the like;
and, following, a noisy rabble, shouting, as crowds
in all lands and in all times shout, and as dogs bark,
they know not why—because others are shouting, or
barking. And that scene marks the highest triumph
won while he lived on earth by the village carpenter
of Galilee, about whom the world has been fighting
and thinking and talking so hard for the last eighteen
hundred years.
“They saw him, angry and indignant, driving out the
desecrators from the temple. They saw the rabble, who
a few brief moments before had followed him, shouting
* Hosanna,' slinking away from him to shout with his
foes.
“They saw the high priests in their robes of
I) IARY OF A PILGRIMAGE . 127
white, with the rabbis and doctors, all the great and
learned in the land, sitting late into the night beneath
the vaulted roof of the Sanhedrin's council-hall, plotting
his death.
“They saw him supping with his disciples in the
house of Simon. They saw poor, loving Mary Mag-
dalen wash his feet with costly ointment, that might
have been sold for three hundred pence, and the money
given to the poor—‘ and us.' Judas was so thoughtful
for the poor, so eager that other people should sell all
they had, and give the money to the poor—‘ and us.”
Methinks that, even in this nineteenth century, one can
still hear from many a tub and platform the voice of
Judas, complaining of all waste, and pleading for the
poor—‘and us.”
“They were present at the parting of Mary and Jesus
by Bethany, and it will be many a day before the memory
of that scene ceases to vibrate in their hearts. It is the
scene that brings the humanness of the great tragedy most
closely home to us. Jesus is going to face sorrow and
death at Jerusalem. Mary's instinct tells her that this
is so, and she pleads to him to stay. -
“Poor Mary To others he is the Christ, the Saviour
of mankind, setting forth upon his mighty mission to re-
deem the world. To loving Mary Mother, he is her son :
the baby she has suckled at her breast, the little one she
has crooned to sleep upon her lap, whose little cheek has
lain against her heart, whose little feet have made sweet
music through the poor home at Bethany: he is her
boy, her child; she would wrap her mother's arms around
him, and hold him safe against all the world, against even
heaven itself.
“Never, in any human drama, have I witnessed a more
9
I28 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
moving scene than this. Never has the voice of any
actress (and I have seen some of the greatest, if any
great ones are living) stirred my heart as did the voice of
Rosa Lang, the Burgomaster's daughter. It was not the
voice of one woman, it was the voice of Motherdom,
gathered together from all the world over.
“Oliver Wendell Holmes, in The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table, I think, confesses to having been be-
witched at different times by two women's voices, and
adds that both these voices belonged to German women.
I am not surprised at either statement of the good
doctor’s. I am sure if a man did fall in love with a
voice, he would find, on tracing it to its source, that it
was the voice of Some homely-looking German woman.
I have never heard such exquisite soul-drawing music
in my life, as I have more than once heard float from
the lips of some sweet-faced German Fraulein when she
opened her mouth to speak. The voice has been so pure,
so clear, so deep, so full of soft caressing tenderness, so
strong to comfort, so gentle to soothe, it has seemed
like one of those harmonies musicians tell us that they
dream of, but can never chain to earth.
“As I sat in the theatre, listening to the wondrous
tones of this mountain peasant-woman, rising and falling
like the murmur of a sea, filling the vast sky-covered
building with their yearning notes, stirring like a great
wind stirs Æolian strings, the thousands of trembling
hearts around her, it seemed to me that I was indeed
listening to the voice of the ‘mother of the world,” of
mother Nature herself.
“They saw him, as they had often seen him in pic-
tures, sitting for the last time with his disciples at supper.
But yesterday they saw him, not a mute, moveless figure,
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I29
posed in conventional, meaningless attitude, but a living,
loving man, sitting in fellowship with the dear friends
that against all the world had believed in him, and had
followed his poor fortunes, talking with them for the last
Sweet time, comforting them.
“They heard him bless the bread and wine that they
themselves to this day take in remembrance of him.
“They saw his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane,
the human shrinking from the cup of pain. They saw the
false friend, Judas, betray him with a kiss. (Alas! poor
Judas! He loved Jesus, in a way, like the rest did. It
was only his fear of poverty that made him betray his
Master. He was so poor—he wanted the money so badly!
We cry out in horror against Judas. Let us pray rather
that we are never tempted to do a shameful action for
a few pieces of silver. The fear of poverty ever did, and
ever will, make scamps of men. We would like to be
faithful and noble and just, only really times are so
bad that we cannot afford it! As Becky Sharp says,
it is so easy to be good and noble on five thousand
a year, so very hard to be it on the mere five. If
Judas had only been a well-to-do man, he might have
been Saint Judas this day, instead of cursed Judas.
He was not bad. He had only one failing—the failing
that makes the difference between a saint and a villain,
all the world over—he was a coward; he was afraid
of being poor.)
“They saw him, pale and silent, dragged now before
the priests of his own countrymen, and now before the
Roman Governor, while the voice of the people—
the people who had cried ‘Hosanna’ to him—shouted
“Crucify him crucify him l’ They saw him bleeding
from the crown of thorns. They saw him, still followed
9 *
I30 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
by the barking mob, sink beneath the burden of his cross.
They saw the woman wipe the bloody sweat from off his
face. They saw the last, long, silent look between the
mother and the son, as, journeying upward to his death,
he passed her in the narrow way through which he once
had ridden in brief-lived triumph. They heard her low
sob as she turned away, leaning on Mary Magdalen.
They saw him nailed upon the cross between the thieves.
They saw the blood start from his side. They heard his
last cry to his God. They saw him rise victorious over
death !
“Few believing Christians among the vast audience but
must have passed out from that strange playhouse with
their belief and love strengthened. The God of the
Christian, for his sake, became a man, and lived and
suffered and died as a man; and, as a man, living,
suffering, dying among other men, he had that day seen
him.
“The man of powerful imagination needs no aid from
mimicry, however excellent, however reverent, to unroll
before him in its simple grandeur the great tragedy on
which the curtain fell at Calvary some eighteen and a half
centuries ago.
“A cultivated mind needs no story of human suffering
to win or hold it to a faith.
“But the imaginative and the cultured are few and far
between, and the peasants of Ober-Ammergau can plead,
as their Master himself once pleaded, that they seek not
to help the learned but the lowly.
“The unbeliever, also, passes out into the village street
full of food for thought. The rude sermon preached in
this hillside temple has shown to him, clearer than he
could have seen before, the secret wherein lies the strength
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I31
of Christianity; the reason why, of all the faiths that
Nature has taught to her children to help them in their
need, to satisfy the hunger of their souls, this faith, born
by the Sea of Galilee, has spread the farthest over the
world, and struck its note the deepest into human life.
Not by his doctrines, not even by his promises, has Christ
laid hold upon the hearts of men, but by the story of his
life.” - -
I32 - DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Cuegoap, the 27th—Continueo,
We Discuss the Performance.—A Marvellous Piece of
Workmanship.–The Adam Family.—Some Living Groups.
—The Chief Performers.—A Good Man, but a Bad judas.-
Where the Histriomic Artist Grows Wild.—An Alarm 1
“A ND what do you think of the performance as a
performance P” asks B.
“Oh, as to that,” I reply, “I think what every-
one who has seen the play must think that it is a
marvellous piece of workmanship.
“Experienced professional stage-managers, with all
the tricks and methods of the theatre at their fingers'
ends, find it impossible, Out of a body of men and women
born and bred in the atmosphere of the playhouse, to
construct a crowd that looks like anything else except
a nervous group of broken-down paupers waiting for
Soup. - -
“At Ober-Ammergau a few village priests and repre-
sentative householders, who have probably never, any one
of them, been inside the walls of a theatre in their lives,
dealing with peasants who have walked straight upon the
stage from their carving-benches and milking-stools, pro-
duceswaying multitudes and clamouring mobs and dignified
assemblages, so natural and truthful, so realistic of the
originals they represent, that you feel you want to leap
upon the stage and strangle them.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 133
“It shows that earnestness and effort can very easily
overtake and pass mere training and technical skill. The
object of the Ober-Ammergau ‘super’ is, not to get out-
side and have a drink, but to help forward the success of
the drama.
“The groupings, both in the scenes of the play itself
and in the various tableaux that precede each act, are such
as I doubt if any artist could improve upon. The tableau
showing the life of Adam and Eve after their expulsion
from Eden makes a beautiful picture. Father Adam,
stalwart and sunbrowned, clad in sheepskins, rests for a
moment from his delving, to wipe the sweat from his brow.
Eve, still looking fair and happy—though I suppose she
Ought not to, sits spinning and watching the children play-
ing at ‘ helping father.’ The chorus from each side of the
stage explained to us that this represented a scene of woe,
the result of sin ; but it seemed to me that the Adam
family were very contented, and I found myself wonder-
ing, in my common, earthly way, whether, with a little
trouble to draw them closer together, and some honest
work to keep them from getting into mischief, Adam
and Eve were not almost better off than they would
have been mooning about Paradise with nothing to do
but talk.
“In the tableau representing the return of the spies
from Canaan, some four or five hundred men, women, and
children are most effectively massed. The feature of the
foreground is the sample bunch of grapes, borne on the
shoulders of two men, which the spies have brought back
with them from the promised land. The sight of this
bunch of grapes, we are told, astonished the children of
Israel. I can quite understand its doing so. The picture
of it used to astonish me, too, when I was a child.
I34 |DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
“The scene of Christ's entry into Jerusalem, sur-
rounded by the welcoming multitude, is a wonderful
reproduction of life and movement, and so also is the
scene, towards the end, showing his last journey up to
Calvary. All Jerusalem seems to have turned out to
see him pass and to follow him, the many laughing,
the few sad. The people fill the narrow streets to over-
flowing, and press round the spears of the Roman
Guard. -
“They throng the steps and balconies of every house,
they strain to catch a sight of Christ above each other's
heads. They leap up on each other's backs to gain a
better vantage-ground from which to hurl their jeers at
him. They jostle irreverently against their priests. Each
individual man, woman, and child on the stage acts, and
acts in perfect harmony with all the rest.
“Of the chief members of the cast—Maier, the gentle
and yet kingly Christ; Burgomaster Lang, the stern,
revengeful High Priest; his daughter Rosa, the sweet-faced,
sweet-voiced Virgin; Rendl, the dignified, statesman-like
Pilate; Peter Rendl, the beloved John, with the purest
and most beautiful face I have ever seen upon a man ; Old
Peter Hett, the rugged, loving, weak friend, Peter; Rutz,
the leader of the chorus (no sinecure, his post); and
Amalie Deschler, the Magdalen—it would be difficult to
speak in terms of too high praise. Themselves mere
peasants There are those two women again, spying
round our door; I am sure of it !” I exclaim, breaking off,
and listening to the sounds that come from the next room.
“I wish they would go downstairs; I am beginning to get
quite nervous.”
“Oh, I don’t think we need worry,” answers B.
“They are quite old ladies, both of them. I met them
37
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 135
on the stairs yesterday. I am sure they look harmless
enough.”
“Well, I don’t know,” I reply. “We are all by our-
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selves, you know. Nearly everyone in the village is at the
theatre. I wish we had got a dog.” -
B. reassures me, however, and I continue :
“Themselves mere peasants,” I repeat, “they repre-
sent some of the greatest figures in the world’s history
with as simple a dignity and as grand a bearing as could
ever have been expected from the originals themselves.
There must be a natural inborn nobility in the character
of these highlanders. They could never assume or act
that manner au grand seigneur with which they imbue
their parts.
“The only character poorly played was that of Judas.

I36 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
The part of Judas is really the part of the piece, so far as
acting is concerned; but the exemplary householder who
essayed it seemed to have no knowledge or experience of
the ways and methods of bad men. There seemed to be
no side of his character sufficiently in sympathy with
wickedness to enable him to understand and portray it.
His amateur attempts at scoundrelism quite irritated me.
It sounds conceited to say so, but I am convinced I could
have given a much more truthful picture of the blackguard
myself. -
“‘Dear, dear me,” I kept on saying under my breath,
“he is doing it all wrong. A downright unmitigated
villain would never go on like that; he would do so and
so, he would look like this, and speak like that, and act
like the other. I know he would. My instinct tells
me so.”
“This actor was evidently not acquainted with even
the rudiments of knavery. I wanted to get up and instruct
him in them. I felt that there were little subtleties of
rascaldom, little touches of criminality, that I could have
put that man up to, which would have transformed his
Judas from woodenness into breathing life. As it was,
with no one in the village apparently who was worth his
salt as a felon to teach him, his performance was uncon-
vincing, and Judas became a figure to laugh rather than
to shudder at.
“With that exception, the whole company, from Maier
down to the donkey, seemed to be fitted to their places
like notes into a master's melody. It would appear as
though, on the banks of the Ammer, the histrionic artist
grew wild.”
“They are real actors, all of them,” murmurs B.
enthusiastically, “the whole village full; and they all
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 137
live happily together in one small valley, and never try to
kill each other. It is marvellous !”
At this point, we hear a sharp knock at the door that
separates the before-mentioned ladies' room from our own.
We both start and turn pale, and then look at each other.
Y!
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B. is the first to recover his presence of mind. Elimi-
nating, by a strong effort, all traces of nervousness from
his voice, he calls out in a tone of wonderful coolness:
“Yes, what is it 2 ”
“Are you in bed ”’’ comes a voice from the other side
of the door.
“Yes,” answers B. “Why?”
“Oh Sorry to disturb you, but we shall be so glad














138 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
when you get up. We can't go downstairs without
coming through your room. This is the only door. We
have been waiting here for two hours, and our train goes
at three.”
Great Scott So that is why the poor old souls have
been hanging round the door, terrifying us out of our
lives. -
“All right, we'll be out in five minutes. So sorry.
Why didn't you call out before ?”
DIARY OF A PILGIRIMAGE. I39
lfríðay, 3Otb, or 5aturbay, 313t.—3 am not gure
Which.
Troubles of a Tourist Agent.—His Views on Tourists.—
The English Woman Abroad.—And at Home.—The Ugliest
Cathedral in Europe.—Old Masters and New.—Victual-and-
Drink-Scapes.—The German Band.—A “Beer Garden.”—
Not the Women to Turn a Man's Head.—Difficulty of Dining
to Music.—Why one should Keep one's Mug Shut.
Friday; but I am positive I have had three cold
baths since we left Ober-Ammergau, which we did
on Wednesday morning. If it is only Friday, then I have
had two morning baths in one day. Anyhow, we shall
know to-morrow by the shops being open or shut.
We travelled from Oberau with a tourist agent, and he
told us all his troubles. It seems that a tourist agent is
an ordinary human man, and has feelings just like we
have. This had never occurred to me before. I told
him so.
“No,” he replied, “it never does occur to you tourists.
You treat us as if we were mere Providence, or even the
Government itself. If all goes well, you say, what is the
good of us, contemptuously ; and if things go wrong, you
say, what is the good of us, indignantly. I work sixteen
hours a day to fix things comfortably for you, and you
cannot even look satisfied; while if a train is late, or a
hotel proprietor overcharges, you come and bully me
about it. If I see after you, you mutter that I am officious;
| THINK myself it is Saturday. B. says it is only
I4O DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
and if I leave you alone, you grumble that I am neglectful.
You swoop down in your hundreds upon a tiny village like
Ober-Ammergau without ever letting us know even that
you are coming, and then threaten to write to the Times
emer-\!
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because there is not a suite of apartments and a hot din-
ner waiting ready for each of you.
“You want the best lodgings in the place, and then,
when at a tremendous cost of trouble, they have been
obtained for you, you object to pay the price asked for
them. You all try and palm yourselves off for dukes and
duchesses, travelling in disguise. You have none of you
ever heard of a second-class railway carriage—didn’t
know that such things were made. You want a first-

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I4I
class Pullman car reserved for each two of you.
Some of you have seen an omnibus, in the distance,
and have wondered what it was used for. To suggest
that you should travel in such a plebeian conveyance, is
to give you a shock that takes you two days to recover
from. You expect a private carriage, with a footman in
livery, to take you through the mountains. You, all of
you, must have the most expensive places in the theatre.
The eight-mark and six-mark places are every bit as good
as the ten-mark seats, of which there are only a very
limited number; but you are grossly insulted if it is hinted
that you should sit in anything but the dearest chairs. If
the villagers would only be sensible and charge you ten
marks for the eight-mark places, you would be happy; but
they won't.”
I must candidly confess that the English-speaking
people one meets with on the Continent are, taken as a
whole, a most disagreeable contingent. One hardly ever
hears the English language spoken on the Continent,
without hearing grumbling and sneering.
The women are the most objectionable. Foreigners
undoubtedly see the very poorest specimens of the female
kind we Anglo-Saxons have to show. The average female
English or American tourist is rude and self-assertive,
while, at the same time, ridiculously helpless and awk-
ward. She is intensely selfish, and utterly inconsiderate
of others; everlastingly complaining, and, in herself, drearily
uninteresting. We travelled down in the omnibus from
Ober-Ammergau with three perfect specimens of the
species, accompanied by the usual miserable-looking man,
who has had all the life talked out of him. They were
grumbling the whole of the way at having been put to ride
in an omnibus. It seemed that they had never been so
I42 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
insulted in their lives before, and they took care to let
everybody in the vehicle know that they had paid for first-
class, and that at home they kept their own carriage.
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They were also very indignant because the people at the
house where they had lodged had offered to shake hands
with them at parting. They did not come to Ober-
Ammergau to be treated on terms of familiarity by German
peasants, they said. -
There are many women in the world who are in every
way much better than angels. They are gentle and
gracious, and generous and kind, and unselfish and good,
in spite of temptations and trials to which mere angels
are never subjected. And there are also many women in
the world who, under the clothes, and not unfrequently
under the title of a lady, wear the heart of an underbred
snob. Having no natural dignity, they think to supply its
place with arrogance. They mistake noisy bounce for
self-possession, and Supercilious rudeness as the sign of
|
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DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I43
superiority. They encourage themselves in sleepy stupidity
under the impression that they are acquiring aristocratic
“repose.” They would appear to have studied “attitude.”
from the pages of the London journal, coquetry from bar-
maids—the commoner class of barmaids, I mean—wit
from thee-act farces, and manners from the servants’-hall.
To be gushingly fawning to those above them, and vulgarly
insolent to everyone they consider below them, is their
idea of the way to hold and improve their position, what-
ever it may be, in society; and to be brutally indifferent to
the rights and feelings of everybody else in the world is,
in their opinion, the hall-mark of gentle birth.
They are the women you see at private views, pushing
themselves in front of everybody else, standing before the
picture so that no one can get near it, and shouting out
their silly opinions, which they evidently imagine to be
brilliantly satirical remarks, in strident tones: the women
who, in the stalls of the theatre, talk loudly all through
the performance; and who, having arrived in the middle
of the first act, and made as much disturbance as they
know how, before settling down in their seats, ostenta-
tiously get up and walk out before the piece is finished :
the women who, at dinner-party and “At Home”—that
cheapest and most deadly uninteresting of all deadly
uninteresting social functions—(You know the receipt
for a fashionable “At Home,” don't you ? Take five
hundred people, two-thirds of whom do not know each
other, and the other third of whom cordially dislike
each other, pack them, on a hot day, into a room
capable of accommodating forty, leave them there to
bore one another to death for a couple of hours with
drawing-room philosophy and second-hand scandal; then
give them a cup of weak tea, and a piece of crumbly cake,” .
10
I44 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
without any plate to eat it on ; or, if it is an evening affair,
a glass of champagne of the you-don't-forget-you’ve-had-it-
for-a-week brand, and a ham-sandwich, and put them out
into the street again)—can do nothing but make spiteful
remarks about everybody whose name and address they
happen to know : the women who, in the penny 'bus (for,
in her own country, the lady of the new school is wonder-
fully economical and business-like), spreads herself out
over the seat, and, looking indignant when a tired little
milliner gets in, would leave the poor girl standing with
her bundle for an hour, rather than make room for her—
the women who write to the papers to complain that
chivalry is dead!
B., who has been looking over my shoulder while I
have been writing the foregoing, after the manner of a
Family Herald story-teller's wife in the last chapter (fancy
a man having to write the story of his early life and
adventures with his wife looking over his shoulder all the
time ! no wonder the tales lack incident), says that I have
been living too much on sauerkrout and white wine; but
I reply that if anything has tended to interfere for a space
with the deep-seated love and admiration that, as a rule,
I entertain for all man and womankind, it is his churches
and picture-galleries. -
We have seen enough churches and pictures since our
return to Munich to last me for a very long while. I shall
not go to church, when I get home again, more than twice
a Sunday, for months to come.
The inhabitants of Munich boast that their Cathedral
is the ugliest in Europe; and, judging from appearances,
I am inclined to think that the claim must be admitted.
Anyhow, if there be an uglier one, I hope I am feeling
... well and strong when I first catch sight of it.
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I45
As for pictures and sculptures, I am thoroughly tired
of them. The greatest art critic living could not dislike
pictures and sculptures more than I do at this moment.
We began by spending a whole morning in each gallery.
We examined each picture critically, and argued with
each other about its “form * and “colour'' and “treat-
ment” and “perspective” and “ texture” and “atmo-
sphere.” I generally said it was flat, and B. that it was
out of drawing. A stranger overhearing our discussions
would have imagined that we knew something about
painting. We would stand in front of a canvas for ten
minutes, drinking it in. We would walk round it, so as to
get the proper light upon it and to better realise the
artist's aim. We would back away from it on to the toes
of the people behind, until we reached the correct “dis-
tance,” and then sit down and shade our eyes, and
criticise it from there; and then we would go up and put
our noses against it, and examine the workmanship in
detail. -
This is how we used to look at pictures in the early
stages of our Munich art studies. Now we use picture
galleries to practice spurts in.
I did a hundred yards this morning through the old
Pantechnicon in twenty-two and a half seconds, which,
for fair heel-and-toe walking, I consider very creditable.
B. took five-eighths of a second longer for the same dis-
tance; but then he dawdled to look at a Raphael.
The “Pantechnicon,” I should explain, is the name
we have, for our own purposes, given to what the
Munichers prefer to call the Pinakothek. We could
never pronounce Pinakothek properly. We called it
“Pynniosec,” “Pintactec,” and the “Happy Tack.” B.
one day after dinner called it the “Penny Cock,” and
10 *
I46 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE,
then we both got frightened, and agreed to fix up some
sensible, practical name for it before any mischief was
done. We finally decided on “Pantechnicon,” which
begins with a “P,” and is a dignified, old-established
name, and one that we can both pronounce. It is quite
as long, and nearly as difficult to spell, before you know
how, as the other, added to which it has a homely Sound.
It seemed to be the very word.
The old Pantechnicon is devoted to the works of the
old masters: I shall not say anything about these, as I do
not wish to disturb in any way the critical opinion that
Europe has already formed concerning them. I prefer
that the art schools of the world should judge for them-
selves in the matter. I will merely remark here, for pur-
poses of reference, that I thought some of the pictures
very beautiful, and that others I did not care for.
What struck me as most curious about the exhibition
was the number of canvases dealing with food stuffs.
Twenty-five per cent. of the pictures in the place seem to
have been painted as advertisements for somebody's home-
grown seeds, or as coloured supplements to be given away
with the summer number of the leading gardening journal
of the period.
“What could have induced these old fellows,” I said
to B., “to choose such very uninteresting subjects 2 Who
on earth cares to look at the life-sized portrait of a
cabbage and a peck of peas, or at these no doubt masterly
representations of a cut from the joint with bread and
vegetables? Look at that “View in a ham-and-beef shop,'
No. 7063, size sixty feet by forty. It must have taken
the artist a couple of years to paint. Who did he expect
was going to buy it 2 And that Christmas-hamper scene
over in the corner; was it painted, do you think, by some
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I47
poor, half-starved devil, who thought he would have
something to eat in the house, if it were only a picture
Of it 2 ”
B. said he thought
the explanation was
that the ancient patrons
of art were gentry with
a very strong idea of the
fitness of things. “For
their churches and
cathedrals,” said Ber
“they had painted
all those virgins and #
maryrs and over-fed
angels that you see
everywhere about
Europe. For their
bedrooms, they or-
dered those — well,
those bedroom sort
of pictures, that you
may have noticed here
and there; and then I expect they used these victual-and-
drink-scapes for their banqueting halls. It must have
been like a gin-and-bitters to them, the sight of all that
food.”
In the new Pantechnicon is exhibited the modern art
of Germany. This appeared to me to be exceedingly
poor stuff. It seemed to belong to the illustrated
Christmas number school of art. It was good, sound,
respectable work enough. There was plenty of colour
about it, and you could tell what everything was meant
for. But there seemed no imagination, no individuality,










148 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
no thought, anywhere. Each picture looked as though it
could have been produced by anyone who had studied and
practised art for the requisite number of years, and who
was not a born fool. At all events, this is my opinion ;
and, as I know nothing whatever about art, I speak with-
out prejudice.
One thing I have enjoyed at Munich very much, and
that has been the music. The German band that you
hear in the square in London while you are trying to
compose an essay on the civilising influence of music, is
not the sort of band that you hear in Germany. The
German bands that come to London are bands that have
fled from Germany in order to save their lives. In
Germany, these bands would be slaughtered at the public
expense and their bodies given to the poor for sausages.
The bands that the Germans keep for themselves are
magnificent bands.
Munich, of all places in the now united Fatherland, has,
I suppose, the greatest reputation for its military bands,
and the citizens are allowed, not only to pay for them, but
to hear them. Two or three times a day in different parts
of the city one or another of them will be playing pro bono
publico, and, in the evening, they are loaned out by the
authorities to the proprietors of the big beer-gardens.
“Go” and dash are the chief characteristics of
their method; but, when needed, they can produce
from the battered, time-worn trumpets, which have been
handed down from player to player since the regiment
was first formed, notes as Soft and full and clear as any
that could start from the strings of some old violin.
The German band in Germany has to know its business
to be listened to by a German audience. The Bavarian
artisan or shopkeeper understands and appreciates good
º
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. - I49
music, as he understands and appreciates good beer.
You cannot impose upon him with an inferior article.
A music-hall audience in Munich are very particular as to
how their beloved Wagner is rendered, and the trifles
from Mozart and Haydn that they love to take in with
their sausages and Salad, and which, when performed to
their satisfaction, ; };ey will thunderously applaud, must
not be taken liberties with, or they will know the reason
why.
The German beer-garden should be visited by every-
one who would see the German people as well as their
churches and castles. It is here that the workers of all
kinds congregate in the evening. Here, after the labours
of the day, come the tradesman with his wife and family,
the young clerk with his betrothed—and also her
mother, alack and well-a-day!—the soldier
with his sweetheart, the
students in twos and Zº *
threes, the little grisette
with her cousin, the shop-
boy and the workman.
Cº.
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Here come grey- §
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they sit thinking of
the children—of little
Lisa, married to
clever Karl, who is
pushing his way in
the far-off land that
lies across the great




















I5o DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
sea ; of laughing Elsie, settled in Hamburg, who has
grandchildren of her own now ; of fair-haired Franz, his
mother's pet, who fell in sunny France, fighting for the
fatherland. At the next table sits a blushing, happy little
maid, full of haughty airs and graces, such as may be
excused to a little maid who has just saved a no doubt
promising, but at present somewhat awkward-looking,
youth from life-long misery, if not madness and suicide
(depend upon it, that is the alternative he put before her),
by at last condescending to give him the plump little hand,
that he, thinking nobody sees him, holds so tightly be-
neath the table-cloth. Opposite, a family group sit dis-
cussing omelettes and a bottle of white wine. The father
contented, good-humoured, and laughing; the small child
grave and solemn, eating and drinking in business-like
fashion ; the mother smiling at both, yet not forgetting
to eat.
I think one would learn to love these German women
if one lived among them for long. There is something so
sweet, so womanly, so genuine about them. They seem
to shed around them, from their bright, good-tempered
faces, a healthy atmosphere of all that is homely, and
simple, and good. Looking into their quiet, steadfast
eyes, one dreams of white household linen, folded in great
presses; of Sweet-smelling herbs; of savoury, appetising
things being cooked for supper; of bright-polished furni-
ture; of the patter of tiny feet; of little high-pitched
voices, asking silly questions; of quiet talks in the lamp-
lit parlour after the children are in bed, upon important
questions of house management and home politics, while
long stockings are being darned.
They are not the sort of women to turn a man’s head,
but they are the sort of women to lay hold of a man's heart
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I51
—very gently at first, so that he hardly knows that they
have touched it, and then, with soft, clinging tendrils that
wrap themselves tighter and tighter year by year around
it, and draw him closer and closer—till, as, one by One,
the false visions and hot passions of his youth fade away,
the plain homely figure fills more and more his days—till
it grows to mean for him all the better, more lasting, truer
part of life—till he feels that the strong, gentle mother-
nature that has stood so long beside him has been welded
firmly into his own, and that they twain are now at last
one finished whole.
We had our dinner at a beer-garden the day before
yesterday. We thought it would be pleasant to eat and
drink to the accompaniment of music, but we found that
in practice this was not so. To dine successfully to music
needs a very strong digestion—especially in Bavaria.
The band that performs at a Munich beer-garden is not
the sort of band that can be ignored. The members of a
Munich military band are big, broad-chested fellows, and
they are not afraid of work. They do not talk much, and
they never whistle. They keep all their breath to do their
duty with. They do not blow their very hardest, for fear
of bursting their instruments; but whatever pressure to
the square inch the trumpet, cornet, or trombone, as the
case may be, is calculated to be capable of sustaining
without permanent injury (and they are tolerably sound
and well-seasoned utensils), that pressure the conscientious
German bandsman puts upon each square inch of the
trumpet, cornet, or trombone, as the case may be.
If you are within a mile of a Munich military band,
and are not stone deaf, you listen to it, and do not think
of much else. It compels your attention by its mere
noise; it dominates your whole being by its sheer strength.
I52 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
Your mind has to follow it as the feet of the little children
followed the playing of the Pied Piper. Whatever you do,
you have to do in unison with the band. All through our
meal we had to keep time with the music.
We ate our soup to slow waltz time, with the result
that every spoonful was cold before we got it up to our
mouth. Just as the fish came, the band started a quick
polka, and the consequence of that was that we had not
time to pick out the bones. We gulped down white wine
to the “Blacksmith's Galop,” and if the tune had lasted
much longer we should both have been blind drunk.
With the advent of our steaks, the band struck up a
selection from Wagner.
I know of no modern European composer so difficult
to eat beefsteaks to as Wagner. That we did not choke
ourselves is a miracle. Wagner's orchestration is most
trying to follow. We had to give up all idea of mustard.
B. tried to eat a bit of bread with his steak, and got most
hopelessly out of tune. I am afraid I was a little flat
myself during the “Valkyries' Ride.” My steak was rather
underdone, and I could not work it quickly enough.
After getting outside hard beefsteak to Wagner, putting
away potato Salad to the garden music out of Faust was
comparatively simple. Once or twice a slice of potato
stuck in our throat during a very high note, but, on the
whole, our rendering was fairly artistic.
We rattled off a sweet omelette to a symphony in G–
or F, or else K; I won’t be positive as to the precise letter;
but it was something in the alphabet, I know—and bolted
our cheese to the ballet music from Carmen. After which
we rolled about in agonies to all the national airs of
Europe.
If ever you visit a German beer-hall or garden—to
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I53
study character or anything of that kind – be careful,
when you have finished drinking your beer, to shut the
cover of the mug down tight. If you leave it with the
cover standing open, that is taken as a sign that you want
more beer, and the girl Snatches it away and brings i
back refilled. -
B. and I very nearly had an accident one warm night,
owing to our ignorance of this custom. Each time, after
we had swallowed the quart, we left the pot, standing
before us with the cover up, and each time it was, in
consequence, taken away, and brought back to us, brimming
full again. After about the sixth time, we gently remon-
strated. -
“This is very kind of you, my good girl,” B. said,
“but really I don’t think we can. I don’t think we ought
to. You must not go on doing this sort of thing. We
will drink this one now that you have brought it, but we
really must insist on its being the last.”
After about the tenth time, we expostulated still more
strongly.
“Now, you know what I told you four quarts ago!”
remarked B., severely. “This can’t go on for ever.
Something serious will be happening. We are not used
to your German school of drinking. We are only foreigners.
In our own country we are considered rather swagger at
this elbow-raising business, and for the credit of old
England we have done our best. But now there must be
an end to it. I simply decline to drink any more. No,
do not press me. Not even another gallon l’”
“But you both sit there with both your mugs open,”
replies the girl in an injured tone.
“What do you mean, ‘we sit with our mugs open' 7"
asks B. “Can't we have our mugs open if we like 7"
1.54 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
“Ah, yes,” she explains pathetically; “but then I
think you want more beer. Gentlemen always open their
mugs when they want them filled with beer.”
We kept our mugs shut after that.
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DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I55
(IDonbap, 3 tune 9th.
A Long Chapter, but happily the Last.—The Pilgrims'
Return.—A Deserted Town.—Heidelberg.—The Common, or
Bed, Sheet, Considered as a Towel.—B. Grapples with a
Continental Time Table.—An Untractable Train.—A Quick
Run.—Trains that Start from Nowhere.—Trains that Arrive
at Nowhere.—Trains that Don't Do Anything.—B. Goes
Mad. — Railway Travelling in Germany. — B. is Taken
Prisoner.—His Fortitude.—Advantages of Ignorance.—First
Impressions of Germany and of the Germans.

7TE are at Ostend. Our pilgrimage has ended.
We sail for Dover in three hours' time. The
wind seems rather fresh, but they say that it
will drop towards the evening. I hope they are not
deceiving us. -
We are disappointed with Ostend. We thought that
Ostend would be gay and crowded. We thought that
there would be bands and theatres and concerts, and busy
table-d'hôtes, and lively sands, and thronged parades, and
pretty girls at Ostend. -
I bought a stick and a new pair of boots at Brussels
on purpose for Ostend. -
There does not seem to be a living visitor in the place
besides ourselves—nor a dead one either, that we can find.
The shops are shut up, the houses are deserted, the
casino is closed. Notice-boards are exhibited outside the
hotels to the effect that the police have strict orders to
I56 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
take into custody anybody found trespassing upon or
damaging the premises.
We found one restaurant which looked a little less like
a morgue than did the other restaurants in the town, and
rang the bell. After we had waited for about a quarter of
an hour, an old woman answered the door, and asked us
what we wanted. We said a steak and chipped potatoes
for two, and a couple of lagers. She said would we call
again in about a fortnight's time, when the family would
be at home 2 She did not herself know where the things
were kept.
We went down on to the sands this morning. We
had not been walking up and down for more than half an
te hour before we came
&_x. across the distinct im-
vº, print of a human foot.
* Someone must have
been there this very
*~~~ day ! We were a good
<-- deal alarmed. We
could not imagine how
<-- he came there.
The weather is
i-º-º- too fine for ship-
*† wrecks, and it was
*** not a part of the
:--__ coast where any
sy - – - passing trader
;\º would be likely to
sº *** land. Besides, if
anyone has landed,
where is he We
`-e-ºw have been able to

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. - I57
find no further trace of him whatever. To this hour
we have never discovered who our strange visitant was.
It is a very mysterious affair, and I am glad we are
going away.
We have been travelling about a good deal since we
left Munich. We went first to Heidelberg. We arrived
early in the morning at Heidelberg, after an all-night
journey, and the first thing that the proprietor of the
Royal suggested, on seeing us, was that we should have a
bath. We consented to the operation, and were each
shown into a little marble bath-room, in which I felt like
a bit out of a picture by Alma Tadema. -
The bath was very refreshing; but I should have
enjoyed the whole thing much better if they had provided
me with something more suitable to wipe upon than a thin
linen sheet. The Germans hold very curious notions as
to the needs and requirements of a wet man. I wish they
would occasionally wash and bath themselves, and then they
would, perhaps, obtain more practical ideas upon the sub-
ject. I have wiped upon a sheet in cases of emergency,
and so I have upon a pair of socks; but there is no doubt
that the proper thing is a towel. To dry oneself upon a
sheet needs special training and unusual agility. A Nautch
Girl or a Dancing Dervish would, no doubt, get through
the performance with credit. They would twirl the sheet
gracefully round their head, draw it lightly across their
back, twist it in waving folds round their legs, wrap
themselves for a moment in its whirling maze, and then
lightly skip away from it, dry and smiling.
But that is not the manner in which the dripping,
untaught Briton attempts to wipe himself upon a sheet.
The method he adopts is, to clutch the sheet with both
hands, lean up against the wall, and rub himself with it.
158 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
In trying to get the thing round to the back of him, he
drops half of it into the water, and from that moment the
bath-room is not big enough to enable him to get away
for an instant from that wet half. When he is wiping the
front of himself with the dry half, the wet half climbs
round behind, and, in a spirit of offensive familiarity, slaps
him on the back. While he is stooping down rubbing his
feet, it throws itself with delirious joy round his head, and
he is black in the face before he can struggle away from
its embrace. When he is least expecting anything of the
kind, it flies round and gives him a playful flick upon
some particularly tender part of his body that sends him
springing with a yell ten feet up into the air. The great
delight of the sheet, as a whole, is to trip him up when-
ever he attempts to move, so as to hear what he says
when he sits down suddenly on the stone floor; and if it
can throw him into the bath --~5 again just as he has
finished wiping him- & -
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DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I59
We spent two days at Heidelberg, climbing the wooded
mountains that surround that pleasant little town, and
that afford, from their restaurant or ruin-crowned sum-
mits, enchanting, far-stretching views, through which,
with many a turn and twist, the distant Rhine and nearer
Neckar wind; or strolling among the crumbling walls and
arches of the grand, history-logged wreck that was once
the noblest castle in all Germany.
We stood in awed admiration before the “Great Tun,”
which is the chief object of interest in Heidelberg. What
there is of interest in the sight of a big beer-barrel it is
difficult, in one's calmer moments, to understand; but the
guide book says that it is a thing to be seen, and so all we
tourists go and stand in a row and gape at it. We are a
sheep-headed lot. If, by a printer's error, no mention
were made in the guide book of the Colosseum, we should
spend a month in Rome, and not think it worth going
across the road to look at. If the guide book says we
must by no means omit to pay a visit to some famous
pincushion that contains eleven million pins, we travel
five hundred miles on purpose to see it !
From Heidelberg we went to Darmstadt. We spent
half-an-hour at Darmstadt. Why we ever thought of
stopping longer there, I do not know. It is a pleasant
enough town to live in, I should say; but utterly unin-
teresting to the stranger. After one walk round it, we
made inquiries as to the next train out of it, and being
informed that one was then on the point of starting, we
tumbled into it and went to Bonn. ‘.
From Bonn (whence we made one or two Rhine
excursions, and where we ascended twenty-eight “blessed
steps” on Our knees—the chapel people called them
“blessed steps”: we didn’t, after the first fourteen) we
11
I6o DIARY G)F A PILGIRIMAGE.
returned to Cologne. From Cologne we went to Brussels;
from Brussels to Ghent (where we saw more famous pic-
tures, and heard the mighty “Roland ” ring “ o'er lagoon
and lake of sand”). From Ghent we went to Bruges
(where I had the satisfaction of throwing a stone at the
statue of Simon Stevin, who added to the miseries of my
school-days by inventing decimals), and from Bruges we
came on here. r
Finding out and arranging our trains has been a fear-
ful work. I have left the whole business to B., and he
has lost two stone over it. I used to think at one time
that my own dear native Bradshaw was a sufficiently hard
nut for the human intellect to crack; or, to transpose the
simile, that Bradshaw was sufficient to crack an ordinary
human nut. But dear old Bradshaw is an axiom in
Euclid for stone-wall obviousness, compared with a
through Continental time-table. Every morning B. has
22– , sat down with the book before him,
22 and, grasping his head between his
2-2. hands, has tried to understand it
e kº 2without going mad.
ſº Ş §§º “Here we are,” he has said.
d %Yº WN , “This is the train that will do
R - º t º s \ ... f. L Munich *
R}/27, º ºff, ºr us ºº "uniº at I.45;
22:-ºff.
“Gets to Heidelberg at 4?” I
exclaim. “Does the whole distance
in two and a quarter hours ? Why, we were all night
coming down l’’ -
“Well, there you are,” he says, pointing to the time-
table. “Munich, depart 1.45; Heidelberg, arrive 4.”
“Yes,” I say, looking over his shoulder; “but don't












DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. - I6I
you see the 4 is in thick type 2 That means 4 in the
morning.” -
“Oh, ah, yes,” he replies. “I never noticed that.
Yes, of course. No 1 it can’t be that either. Why,
that would make the journey fourteen hours. It can’t
take fourteen hours. No, of course not. That’s not
meant for thick type, that 4. That’s thin type got a little
thick, that's all.”
“Well, it can’t be 4 this afternoon,” I argue. “It
must be 4 to-morrow afternoon | That’s just what a
German express train would like to do—take a whole day
over a six hours' job l’’
He puzzles for a while, and then breaks out with :
“Oh I see it now. How stupid of me ! That train
that gets to Heidelberg at 4 comes from Berlin.”
He seems quite delighted with this discovery.
“What's the good of it to us, then 2 ” I ask.
That depresses him.
“No, it’s not much good, I'm afraid,” he agrees.
“It seems to go straight from Berlin to Heidelberg with-
out stopping at Munich at all. Well then, where does
the I.45 go to ? It must go somewhere.”
Five minutes more elapse, and then he exclaims:
“Drat this I.45 ! It doesn't seem to go any-
where. Munich depart I.45, and that’s all. It must go
somewhere ! ”
Apparently, however, it does not. It seems to be a
train that starts out from Munich at I.45, and goes off on
the loose. Possibly, it is a young, romantic train, fond
of mystery. It won't say where it's going to. It
probably does not even know itself. It goes off in search
of adventure.
“I shall start off,” it says to itself, “at 1.45 punctually,
11 *
I62 DIARY OF A PILG RIMAGE,
and just go on anyhow, without thinking about it, and
see where I get to.”
Or maybe it is a conceited, headstrong young train.
It will not be guided or advised. The traffic superin-
tendent wants it to go to St. Petersburg or to Paris.
The old, grey-headed station-master argues with it, and
2=% \)
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tries to persuade it to go to Constantinople, or even
to Jerusalem if it likes that better—urges it to, at all
events, make up its mind where it is going—warns it
of the danger to young trains of having no fixed aim
or object in life. Other people, asked to use their in-
fluence with it, have talked to it like a father, and have
begged it, for their sakes, to go to Kamskatka, or Tim-
buctoo, or Jericho, according as they have thought best
for it; and then, finding that it takes no notice of them,
have got wild with it, and have told it to go to still more
distant places.








DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGEs 163
But to all counsel and entreaty it has turned a deaf
€3.I.
“You leave me alone,” it has replied; “I know where
I’m going to. Don't you worry yourself about me. You
mind your own business, all of you. I don't want a lot
of old fools telling me what to do. I know what I’m
about.” -
What can be expected from such a train 2 The
chances are that it comes to a bad end. I expect it is
recognised afterwards, a broken-down, unloved, friendless,
old train, wandering aimless and despised in some far-off
country, musing with bitter regret upon the day when,
full of foolish pride and ambition, it started from Munich,
with its boiler nicely oiled, at I.45. -
B. abandons this I.45 as hopeless and incorrigible,
and continues his search.
“ Hulloa what’s this 2 ” he exclaims. “How will this
do us? Leaves Munich at 4, gets to Heidelberg 4.15.
That's quick work. Something wrong there. That won't

164 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
do. You can't get from Munich to Heidelberg in a quarter
of an hour. Oh I see it. That 4 o’clock goes to
Brussels, and then on to Heidelberg afterwards. Gets
in there at 4.15 to-morrow, I suppose. I wonder why it
goes round by Brussels, though 2 Then it seems to stop
at Prague for ever so long. Oh, damn this time-table !”
Then he finds another train that starts at 2.15, and
seems to be an ideal train. He gets quite enthusiastic
over this train.
“This is the train for us, old man,” he says. “This
is a splendid train, really. It doesn't stop anywhere.”
“Does it get anywhere 2 ” I ask.
“Of course it gets somewhere,” he replies, indignantly.
“It’s an expressl Munich,” he murmurs, tracing its
course through the time-table, “depart 2.15. First
and second class only. Nuremberg 2 No; it doesn’t
stop at Nuremberg. Wurtzburg 2 No. Frankfort for
Strasburg 2 No. Cologne, Antwerp, Calais ? Well,
where does it stop 2 Confound it ! it must stop some-
where. Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen 2 No.
Upon my soul, this is another train that does not go any-
where ! It starts from Munich at 2.I5, and that’s all. It
doesn’t do anything else.”
It seems to be a habit of Munich trains to start off in
this purposeless way. Apparently, their sole object is to
get away from the town. They don't care where they
go to; they don't care what becomes of them, so long as
they escape from Munich.
“For heaven’s sake,” they say to themselves, “let us
get away from this place. Don't let us bother about
where we shall go ; we can decide that when we are
once fairly outside. Let's get out of Munich; that's the
great thing.”
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I65
B. begins to grow quite frightened. He says:
“We shall never be able to leave this city. There
are no trains out of Munich at all. It’s a plot to keep
us here, that 's what it is. We shall never be able to get
away. We shall never see dear old England again ”
I try to cheer him up by suggesting that perhaps it
is the custom in Bavaria to leave the destination of the
train to the taste and fancy of the passengers. The rail-
way authorities provide a train, and start it off at 2.I.5.
It is immaterial to them where it goes to. That is a
question for the passengers to decide among themselves.
The passengers hire the train and take it away, and there
is an end of the matter, so far as the railway people are
concerned. If there is any difference of opinion between
the passengers, owing to some of them wishing to go to
Spain, while others want to get home to Russia, they, no
doubt, settle the matter by tossing up. .
B., however, refuses to entertain this theory, and says
he wishes I would not talk so much when I see how
harassed he is. That’s all the thanks I get for trying
to help him -
He worries along for another five minutes, and then he
discovers a train that gets to Heidelberg all right, and
appears to be in most respects a model train, the only
thing that can be urged against it being that it does not
start from anywhere. -
It seems to drop into Heidelberg casually, and then to
stop there. One expects its sudden advent alarms the
people at Heidelberg station. They do not know what to
make of it. The porter goes up to the station-master,
and says: -
“Beg pardon, sir, but there’s a strange train in the
station.”
I66 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
“Oh I'' answers the station-master, surprised, “where
did it come from ?”
“Don’t know,” replies the man; “it doesn't seem to
know itself.”
“Dear me,” says the station-master, “how very extra-
ordinary ! What does it want?”
“Doesn’t seem to want
anything particular,” replies
the other. “It’s a curi-
ous sort of train. Seems
to be a bit dotty, if you
ask me.”
“ Um,” muses the
station-master, “it’s a
rum go. Well, I sup-
pose we must let it stop
here a bit now. We
can hardly turn it out
a night like this. Oh,
let it make itself com-
fortable in the wood-
shed till the morning, and then we will see if we can
find its friends.”
At last B. makes the discovery that to get to Heidel-
berg we must go to Darmstadt and take another train
from there. This knowledge gives him renewed hope and
strength, and he sets to work afresh—this time, to find
trains from Munich to Darmstadt, and from Darmstadt
to Heidelberg.
“Here we are,” he cries, after a few minutes' hunting.
“I’ve got it !” (He is of a buoyant disposition.) “This will
be it. Leaves Munich Io, gets to Darmstadt 5.25. Leaves
Darmstadt for Heidelberg 5.2O, gets to 7 5

DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 167,
:
“That doesn't allow us much time for changing, does
it 2 " I remark.
“No,” he replies, growing thoughtful again. “No,
that's awkward. If it were only the other way round, it
would be all right, or it would do if our train got there
five minutes before its time, and the other one was a little
late in starting.”
“Hardly safe to reckon on that,” I suggest ; and he
agrees with me, and proceeds to look for some more fitable
trains. -
It would appear, however, that all the trains from
Darmstadt to Heidelberg start just a few minutes before
the trains from Munich arrive. It looks quite pointed, as
though they tried to avoid us. .
B.'s intellect generally gives way about this point, and
he becomes simply drivelling. He discovers trains that
run from Munich to Heidelberg in fourteen minutes, by
way of Venice and Geneva, with half-an-hour's interval,
for breakfast at Rome. He rushes up and down the book
in pursuit of demon expresses that arrive at their destina-
tions forty-seven minutes before they start, and leave again
before they get there. He finds out, all by himself, that
the only way to get from South Germany to Paris is to go
to Calais, and then take the boat to Moscow. Before
he has done with the time-table, he doesn’t know whether
he is in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, nor where he
wants to get to, nor why he wants to go there.
Then I quietly, but firmly, take the book away from
him, and dress him for going out; and we take our bags
and walk to the station, and tell a porter that, “Please,
we want to go to Heidelberg.” And the porter takes us
one by each hand, and leads us to a seat and tells us to
sit there and be good, and that, when it is time, he will.
;
I68 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
come and fetch us and put us in the train; and this he
does.
That is my method of finding out how to get from one
place to another. It is not as dignified, perhaps, as B.'s,
but it is simpler and more efficacious. ** -
It is slow work travelling in Germany. The German
train does not hurry or excite itself over its work, and
when it stops it likes to take a rest. When a German
train draws up at a station, everybody gets out and has a
walk. The engine-driver and the stoker cross over and
knock at the station-master’s door. The station-master
comes out and greets them effusively, and then runs back
into the house to tell his wife that they have come, and
she bustles out and also welcomes them effusively, and
the four stand chatting about old times and friends and
the state of the crops. After a while, the engine-driver,
during a pause in the conversation, looks at his watch,
and says he is afraid he must be going, but the station-
master’s wife won’t hear of it.
“Oh, you must stop and see the children,” she says.
“They will be home from school soon, and they’ll be so
disappointed if they hear you have been here and gone
away again. Lizzie will never forgive you.”
The engine-driver and the stoker laugh, and say that
under those circumstances they suppose they must stop;
and they do so. -
Meanwhile the booking-clerk has introduced the guard
to his sister, and such a very promising flirtation has been
taking place behind the ticket-office door that it would
not be surprising if wedding-bells were heard in the
neighbourhood before long.
The second guard has gone down into the town to
try and sell a dog, and the passengers stroll about the
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 169
platform and smoke, or partake of a light meal in the
refreshment-room—the poorer classes regaling themselves
upon hot sausage, and the more dainty upon soup. When
everybody appears to be sufficiently rested, a move onward
is suggested by the engine-driver or the guard, and if all
are agreeable to the proposal the train starts.
Tremendous excitement was caused during our journey
between Heidelberg and Darmstadt by the discovery that
we were travelling in an express train (they called it an
“express:” it jogged along at the rate of twenty miles an
hour when it could be got to move at all ; most of its
time it seemed to be half asleep) with slow-train tickets.
The train was stopped at the next station and B. was
marched off between two stern-looking gold-laced officials
to explain the matter to a stern-looking gold-laced station-
master, Surrounded by three stern-looking gold-laced fol-
lowers. The scene suggested a drum-head court-martial,

17o DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
and I could see that B. was nervous, though outwardly
calm and brave. He shouted back a light-hearted adieu
to me as he passed down the platform, and asked me, if
the worst happened, to break it gently to his mother.
However, no harm came of it, and he returned to the
carriage without a stain upon his character, he having
made it clear to the satisfaction of the court—firstly,
That he did not know that our tickets were only slow-
train tickets; secondly, That he was not aware that we
were not travelling by a slow train; and thirdly, That he
was ready to pay the difference in the fares.
He blamed himself for having done this last, however,
afterwards. He seemed to think that he could have
avoided this expense by assuming ignorance of the
German language. He said that two years ago, when
he was travelling in Germany with three other men, the
authorities came down upon them in much the same way
for travelling first-class with second-class tickets.
Why they were doing this B. did not seem able to
explain very clearly. He said that, if he recollected rightly,
the guard had told them to get into a first-class, or else
they had not had time to get into a second-class, or else
they did not know they were not in a second-class. I
must confess his explanation appeared to me to be some-
what lame.
Anyhow, there they were in a first-class carriage; and
there was the collector at the door, looking indignantly at
their second-class tickets, and waiting to hear what they
had to say for themselves.
One of their party did not know much German,
but what little he did know he was very proud of and
liked to air ; and this one argued the matter with
the collector, and expressed himself in German so well
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. 17I
that the collector understood and disbelieved every word
he said.
He was also, on his part, able, with a little trouble, to
understand what the collector said, which was that he
must pay eighteen marks. And he had to.
As for the other three, two at all events of whom were
excellent German scholars, they did not understand any-
thing, and nobody could make them understand anything.
F->
|
;|
The collector roared at them for about ten minutes, and
they smiled pleasantly and said they wanted to go to
Hanover. He went and fetched the station-master, and
the station-master explained to them for another ten
minutes that, if they did not pay eighteen shillings each,
he should do the German equivalent for summonsing them;
and they smiled and nodded, and told him that they
wanted to go to Hanover.
Then a very important-looking personage in a cocked-
hat came up, and was very angry; and he and the station-


172 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
master and the collector took it in turns to explain to B.
and his two friends the state of the law on the matter.
They stormed and raged, and threatened and pleaded
for a quarter of an hour or so, and then they got sick, and
slammed the door, and went off, leaving the Government
to lose the fifty-four marks.
We passed the German frontier on Wednesday, and
have been in Belgium since.
I like the Germans. B. says I ought not to let them
know this, because it will make them conceited ; but I
have no fear of such a result. I am sure they possess too
much common-sense for their heads to be turned by praise,
no matter from whom.
B. also says that I am displaying more energy than
prudence in forming an opinion of a people merely from a
few weeks travel amongst them. But my experience is
that first impressions are the most reliable. -
At all events, in my case they are. I often arrive at
quite sensible ideas and judgments, on the spur of the
moment. It is when I stop to think that I become
foolish.
Our first thoughts are the thoughts that are given to
us; our second thoughts are the thoughts that we make
for ourselves. I prefer to trust to the former.
The Germans are a big, square-shouldered, deep-
chested race. They do not talk much, but look as though
they thought. Like all big things, they are easy-going
and good-tempered.
Anti-tobacconists, teetotallers, and such-like faddists,
would fare badly in Germany. A German has no anti-
nature notions as to its being wicked for him to enjoy
his life, and still more criminal for him to let anybody
else enjoy theirs. He likes his huge pipe, and he likes
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE. I73
his mug of beer, and as these become empty he likes to
have them filled again; and he likes to see other people
like their pipe and their mug of beer. If you were to go
dancing round a Ger-
man, shrieking out en-
treaties to him to sign
a pledge that he would
never drink another
drop of beer again as
long as he lived, he º
would ask you sº * Lºº. I
to remember 8, s º
that you were ee §, gº ſ sº
talking to a º º | ºl, % gº |
man, not to a tº-W º §§ £º %|
child or an im zºº”W. \ -º W §A 4% ºf
|
becile, and he \ \. tº 4/º ſ
º 2% * §"...º.
ū **:
would probably
impress the re-
quest upon you
by boxing your
ears for your impertinence. He can conduct himself
sensibly without making an ass of himself. He can be
“temperate” without tying bits of coloured ribbon all
about himself to advertise the fact, and without rush-
ing up and down the street waving a banner and yelling
about it.
The German women are not beautiful, but they are
lovable and sweet; and they are broad-breasted and
broad-hipped, like the mothers of big sons should be.
They do not seem to trouble themselves about their
“rights,” but appear to be very contented and happy
even without votes. The men treat them with courtesy
















I74 DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE.
and tenderness, but with none of that exaggerated
deference that one sees among more petticoat-ridden
nations. The Germans are women lovers, not women
worshippers; and they are not worried by any doubts as
to which sex shall rule the State, and which stop at home
and mind the children. The German women are not
politicians and mayors and county Councillors; they are
housewives. *
All classes of Germans are scrupulously polite to one
another; but this is the result of mutual respect, not of
snobbery. The tramcar conductor expects to be treated
with precisely the same courtesy that he tenders. The
Count raises his hat to the shopkeeper, and expects the
shopkeeper to raise his hat to him.
The Germans are hearty eaters; but they are not,
like the French, fussy and finickin over their food. Their
stomach is not their God ; and the cook, with his sauces
and pâtés and ragoûts, is not their High Priest. So long
as the dish is wholesome, and there is sufficient of it,
they are satisfied.
In the mere sensuous arts of painting and sculpture
the Germans are poor, in the ennobling arts of literature
and music they are great; and this fact provides a key to
their character.
They are a simple, earnest, homely, genuine people.
They do not laugh much ; but when they do, they laugh
deep down. They are slow, but so is a deep river. A
placid look generally rests upon their heavy features; but
sometimes they frown, and then they look somewhat grim.
A visit to Germany is a tonic to an Englishman. We
English are always Sneering at Ourselves, and patriotism
in England is regarded as a stamp of vulgarity. The
Germans, on the other hand, believe in themselves, and
DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE, I75
respect themselves. The world for them is not played
out. Their country to them is still the “Fatherland.”
They look straight before them like a people who see a
great future in front of them, and are not afraid to go
forward to fulfil it.
GOOD-BYE, SIR (OR MADAM).

EVERGREENS.
12 *
EJ/ERGREENS.
*=s===
H E Y look so dull and dowdy in the sweet
| spring weather, when the Snowdrops and the
crocuses are putting on their dainty frocks of
white and mauve and yellow, and the baby-buds from
every branch are peeping with bright eyes out on the
world, and stretching forth soft little leaves towards the
coming gladness of their lives. They stand apart, so
cold and hard amid the stirring hope and joy that are
throbbing all around them.
And in the deep, full summer-time, when all the rest
of nature dons its richest garb of green, and the roses
clamber round the porch, and the grass waves waist-high
in the meadow, and the fields are gay with flowers, they
seem duller and dowdier than ever then, wearing their
faded winter's dress, looking so dingy and old and worn.
In the mellow days of autumn, when the trees, like
dames no longer young, seek to forget their aged looks
under gorgeous bright-toned robes of gold and brown and
purple, and the grain is yellow in the fields, and the ruddy
fruit hangs clustering from the drooping boughs, and the
wooded hills in their thousand hues stretch like leafy
rainbows above the vale, -ah! Surely they look their dullest
and dowdiest then. The gathered glory of the dying year
is all around them. They seem so out of place among it,
in their sombre, everlasting green, like poor relations at a
rich man’s feast. It is such a weather-beaten old green
I8o EVERGREENS.
dress. So many summers’ suns have blistered it, so many
winters' rains have beat upon it—such a shabby, mean,
old dress: it is the only one they have
They do not look quite so bad when the weary winter
weather is come, when the flowers are dead, and the
hedgerows are bare, and the trees stand out leafless
against the grey sky, and the birds are all silent, and the
fields are brown, and the vine clings round the cottage
with skinny, fleshless arms, and they alone of all things
are unchanged, they alone of all the forest are green,
they alone of all the verdant host stand firm to front the
cruel winter.
They are not very beautiful, only strong and staunch
and steadfast—the same in all times, through all seasons
—ever the same, ever green. The spring cannot brighten
them, the summer cannot scorch them, the autumn cannot
wither them, the winter cannot kill them.
There are evergreen men and women in the world,
praise be to God!—not many of them, but a few. They
are not the showy folk; they are not the clever, attractive
folk. (Nature is an old-fashioned shopkeeper : she never,
puts her best goods in the window.) They are only the
quiet, strong folk: they are stronger than the world,
stronger than life and death, stronger than Fate. The
storms of life sweep over them, and the rains beat down
upon them, and the biting frosts creep round them; but
the winds and the rains and the frosts pass away, and
they are still standing, green and straight. They love the
sunshine of life in their undemonstrative way—its
pleasures, its joys. But calamity cannot bow them,
sorrow and affliction bring not despair to their serene
faces, only a little tightening of the lips; the sun of our
prosperity makes the green of their friendship no brighter,
EVERGREENS. I8).
the frost of our adversity kills not the leaves of their
affection.
Let us lay hold of such men and women; let us
grapple them to us with hooks of steel; let us cling to
them as we would to rocks in a tossing sea. We do not
think very much of them in the summer-time of life. They
do not flatter us or gush over us. They do not always
agree with us. They are not always the most delightful
Society, by any means. They are not good talkers, nor—
which would do just as well, perhaps better—do they
make enraptured listeners. They have awkward manners,
and very little tact. They do not shine to advantage
beside our society friends. They do not dress well; they
look altogether somewhat dowdy and commonplace. We
almost hope they will not see us when we meet them just
outside the club. They are not the sort of people we want
to Ostentatiously greet in crowded places. It is not till
the days of our need that we learn to love and know them.
It is not till the winter that the birds see the wisdom of
building their nests in the evergreen trees.
And we, in our spring-time folly of youth, pass them
by with a sneer, the uninteresting, colourless evergreens,
and, like silly children with nothing but eyes in their
heads, stretch out our hands and cry for the pretty
flowers. We will make our little garden of life such a
charming, fairy-like spot, the envy of every passer-by
There shall nothing grow in it but lilies and roses, and
the cottage we will cover all over with virginia-creeper.
And, oh, how sweet it will look, under the dancing
summer sunlight, when the soft west breeze is blowing !
And, oh, how we shall stand and shiver there when the
rain and the east wind come ! .
Oh, you foolish, foolish little maidens, with your
182 EVERGREENS.
dainty heads so full of unwisdom | how often—oh ! how
often, are you to be warned that it is not always the
sweetest thing in lovers that is the best material to make
a good-wearing husband out off “The lover sighing like
a furnace" will not go on sighing like a furnace for ever.
That furnace will go out. He will become the husband,
“full of strange oaths—jealous in honour, sudden and
quick in quarrel,” and grow “into the lean and slipper'd
pantaloon.” How will he wear 2 There will be no
changing him if he does not suit, no sending him back to
be altered, no having him let out a bit where he is too tight
and hurts you, no having him taken in where he is too
loose, no laying him by when the cold comes, to wrap
yourself up in something warmer. As he is when you
select him, so he will have to last you all your life—through
all changes, through all seasons.
Yes, he looks very pretty now—handsome pattern, if
the colours are fast and it does not fade—feels soft and
warm to the touch. How will he stand the world's rough
weather ? How will he stand life’s wear-and-tear 2
He looks so manly and brave. His hair curls so
divinely. He dresses so well (I wonder if the tailor's bill
is paid 2) He kisses your hand so gracefully, He calls
you such pretty names. His arm feels so strong around
you. His fine eyes are so full of tenderness as they gaze
down into yours.
Will he kiss your hand when it is wrinkled and old 2
Will he call you pretty names when the baby is crying in
the night, and you cannot keep it quiet—or, better still,
will he sit up and take a turn with it 2 Will his arm be
strong around you in the days of trouble f Will his eyes
shine above you full of tenderness when yours are growing
dim P
EVERGREENS. 183
And you boys, you silly boys | what materials for a
wife do you think you will get out of the empty-headed
coquettes you are raving and tearing your hair about 2
Oh! yes, she is very handsome, and she dresses with ex-
quisite taste (the result of devoting the whole of her heart,
mind, and Soul to the subject, and never allowing her
thoughts to be distracted from it by any other mundane
or celestial object whatsoever); and she is very agreeable
and entertaining and fascinating ; and she will go on
looking handsome, and dressing exquisitely, and being
agreeable and entertaining and fascinating, just as much
after you have married her as before—more so, if anything.
But you will not get the benefit of it. Husbands will
be charmed and fascinated by her in plenty, but you will
not be among them. You will run the show, you will pay
all the expenses, do all the work. Your performing lady
will be most affable and enchanting to the crowd. They
will stare at her, and admire her, and talk to her, and flirt
with her. And you will be able to feel that you are quite
a benefactor to your fellow-men and women,_to your
fellow-men especially,–in providing such delightful amuse-
ment for them, free. But you will not get any of the fun
yourself.
You will not get the handsome looks. You will get the
jaded face, and the dull, lustreless eyes, and the untidy
hair with the dye showing on it. You will not get the
exquisite dresses. You will get dirty, shabby frocks, and
slommicking dressing-gowns, such as your Cook would be
ashamed to wear. You will not get the charm and
fascination. You will get the after-headaches, the com-
plainings and grumblings, the silence and Sulkiness, the
weariness and lassitude and ill-temper that come as such
a relief after working hard all day at being pleasant
184 EVERGREENS.
It is not the people who shine in Society, but the
people who brighten up the back parlour; not the people
who are charming when they are out, but the people who
are charming when they are in, that are good to live with.
It is not the brilliant men and women, but the simple,
strong, restful men and women, that make the best travel-
ling companions for the road of Life. The men and women
who will only laugh as they put up the umbrella when the
rain begins to fall, who will trudge along cheerfully through
the mud and over the stony places, the comrades who
will lay their firm hand on ours and strengthen us when
the way is dark, and we are growing weak,-the evergreen
men and women, who, like the holly, are at their brightest
and best when the blast blows chilliest—the stanch men
and women -
It is a grand thing this stanchness. It is the differ-
ence between a dog and a sheep—between a man and an
Oyster.
Women, as a rule, are stancher than men. There
are women that you feel you could rely upon to the
death. But very few men indeed have this dog-like
virtue. Men, taking them generally, are more like cats.
You may live with them and call them yours for twenty
years, but you can never feel quite sure of them. You
never know exactly what they are thinking of. You never
feel easy in your mind as to the result of the next-door
neighbour's laying down a Brussels carpet in his kitchen.
We have no school for the turning-out of stanch men
in this nineteenth century. In the old, earnest times, War
made men stanch and true to each other. We have
learnt up a good many glib phrases about the wickedness
of war, and we thank God that we live in these peaceful,
trading times, wherein we can—and do—devote the
EVERGREENS, 185
whole of our thoughts and energies to robbing and cheat-
ing and swindling one another, to “doing” our friends,
and overcoming our enemies by trickery and lies, wherein,
undisturbed by the wicked ways of fighting-men, we can
cultivate to better perfection the “smartness,” the craft,
and the cunning, and all the other “business-like” virtues
on which we so pride ourselves, and which were so
neglected and treated with so little respect in the bad
old age of violence, when men chose lions and eagles for
their symbols, rather than foxes.
There is a good deal to be said against war. I am not
prepared to maintain that war did not bring with it dis-
advantages, but there can be no doubt that, for the noblest
work of Nature, the making of men—it was a splendid
manufactory. It taught men courage. It trained them
in promptness and determination, in strength of brain and
strength of hand. From its stern lessons they learned
fortitude in suffering, coolness in danger, cheerfulness
under reverses. Chivalry, Reverence, and Loyalty are
the beautiful children of ugly War. But, above all gifts,
the greatest gift it gave to men was stanchness.
It first taught men to be true to one another; to be
true to their duty, true to their post; to be in all things
faithful, even unto death.
The martyrs that died at the stake; the explorers that
fought with Nature and opened up the world for us; the
reformers (they had to do something more than talk in
those days) who won for us our liberties; the men who
gave their lives to science and art, when science and art
brought, not as now, fame and fortune, but shame and
penury, they sprang from the loins of the rugged men
who had learnt, on many a grim battle-field, to laugh at
pain and death, who had had it hammered into them,
186 EVERGREENS.
with many a hard blow, that the whole duty of a man in
this world is to be true to his trust, and fear not.
Do you remember the story of the old Viking who had
been converted to Christianity, and who, just as they were
about, with much joy, to baptise him, paused and asked:
“But what—if this, as you tell me, is the only way to the
true Valhalla—what has become of my comrades, my
friends who are dead, who died in the old faith—where
are they f"
The priests, confused, replied there could be no doubt
those unfortunate folk had gone to a place they would
rather not mention.
“Then,” said the old warrior, stepping back, “I will
not be baptised. I will go along with my own people.”
He had lived with them, fought beside them; they
were his people. He would stand by them to the end—
of eternity. Most assuredly, a very shocking old Viking !
But I think it might be worth while giving up our civilisa-
tion and our culture, to get back to the days when they
made men like that.
The only reminder of such times that we have left us
now, is the bull-dog; and he is fast dying out—the pity
of it ! What a splendid old dog he is so grim, so silent,
so stanch; so terrible, when he has got his idea of his
duty clear before him; so absurdly meek, when it is only
himself that is concerned.
He is the gentlest, too, and the most lovable of all
dogs. He does not look it. The sweetness of his dis-
position would not strike the casual observer at first
glance. He resembles the gentleman spoken of in the
oft-quoted Stanza :
“’E's all right when yer knows 'im,
But yer've got to know 'im fust.”
EVERGREENS. 187
The first time I ever met a bull-dog—to speak to, that
is—was many years ago. We were lodging down in the
country, an orphan friend of mine, named George, and
myself, and one night, coming home late from some dis-
solving views, we found the family had gone to bed.
They had left a light in our room, however, and we went
in and sat down, and began to take off our boots.
And then, for the first time, we noticed on the hearth-
rug a bull-dog. A dog with a more thoughtfully-ferocious
expression—a dog with, apparently, a heart
more dead to all ennobling and civilising senti-
ments—I have never seen. As George said,
he looked more like some Heathen idol g º
than a happy English dog. /...?? º
He appeared to have been waiting for { # % %
us; and he rose up and greeted us with % ğ)\{%
a ghastly grin, and got between us and ſº
the door. ... "…, *
We Smiled at him—a sickly, propitiatory smile. We
said, “Good dog—poor fellow !” and we asked him, in
tones implying that the question could admit of no nega-
tive, if he was not a “nice old chap.” We did not really
think so. We had our own private opinion concerning
him, and it was unfavourable. But we did not express
it. We would not have hurt his feelings for the world.
He was a visitor—Our guest, so to speak—and, as well-
brought-up young men, we felt that the right thing to do
was for us to prevent his gaining any hint that we were
not glad to see him, and to make him feel as little as pos-
sible the awkwardness of his position.
I think we succeeded. He was singularly unem-
barrassed, and far more at his ease than even we were.
He took but little notice of our flattering remarks, but

I88 EVERGREENS.
was much drawn towards George's legs. George used to
be, I remember, rather proud of his legs. I could never
see enough in them, myself, to excuse George's vanity;
indeed, they always struck me as lumpy. It is only fair
to acknowledge, however, that they quite fascinated that
bull-dog. He walked over and criticised them with the
air of a long-baffled connoisseur who had at last found his
ideal. At the termination of his inspection he distinctly
smiled.
George, who at that time was modest and bashful,
blushed and drew them up on to the chair. On the dog's
displaying a desire to follow them, George moved up on
to the table, and squatted there in the middle, nursing
his knees. -
George's legs being lost to him, the dog appeared in-
clined to console himself with mine. I went and sat
beside George on the table.
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EVERGREENS. 189
Sitting with your feet drawn up in front of you, on a
small and rickety one-legged table, is a most trying exer-
cise, especially if you are not used to it. George and I
both felt our position keenly. We did not like to call out
for help, and bring the family down. We were proud
young men, and we feared lest, to the unsympathetic eye
of the comparative stranger, the spectacle we should pre-
sent might not prove imposing. -
So we sat on in silence for about half-an-hour, the
dog keeping a reproachful eye upon us from the nearest
chair, and displaying elephantine delight whenever we
made any movement suggestive of climbing down.
At the end of the half-hour we discussed the advisa-
bility of “chancing it,” but decided not to. “We should
never,” George said, “confound foolhardiness with
courage.”
“Courage,” he continued,—George had quite a gift
for maxims, –“ Courage is the wisdom of manhood; fool-
hardiness, the folly of youth.”
He said that to get down from the table while that
dog remained in the room, would clearly prove us to be
possessed of the latter quality; so we restrained ourselves,
and sat On.
We sat on for over an hour, by which time, having both
grown careless of life and indifferent to the voice of
Wisdom, we did “chance it; ” and, throwing the table-
cloth over our would-be murderer, charged for the door
and got out.
The next morning we complained to our landlady of
her carelessness in leaving wild beasts about the place,
and we gave her a brief, if not exactly truthful, history
of the business.
Instead of the tender womanly sympathy we had
I90 EVERGREENS.
expected, the old lady sat down in the easy-chair and
burst out laughing. -
“What old Boozer P’’ she exclaimed; “you was
afraid of Old Boozer | Why, bless you,
he wouldn't hurt a worm He ain’t got a
feed him with a spoon; and I’m sure
\the way the cat chivies him about must
be enough to make his life a burden
to him. I expect he wanted you
to nurse him; he’s used to being
nursed.”
And that was the brute that had
kept us sitting on a table, with our
boots off, for Over an hour on a
chilly night !
Another bull-dog exhibition that
occurs to me was one given by my uncle. He had had
a bull-dog—a young one—given to him by a friend. It
was a grand dog, so his friend had told him ; all it wanted
was training—it had not been properly trained. My uncle
did not profess to know much about the training of bull-
dogs; but it seemed a simple enough matter, so he
thanked the man, and took his prize home at the end of
a rope.
“Have we got to live in the house with this P” asked
my aunt, indignantly, coming into the room about an
hour after the dog's advent, followed by the quadruped
himself, wearing an idiotically self-satisfied air.
“That l” exclaimed my uncle, in astonishment;
“why, it's a splendid dog. His father was honourably
mentioned only last year at the Aquarium.”
“Ah, well, all I can say is, that his son isn't going the



EVERGINEENS. IQI
way to get honourably mentioned in this neighbourhood,”
replied my aunt, with bitterness : “he’s just finished
killing poor Mrs. McSlanger's cat, if you want to know
what he has been doing. And a pretty row there’ll be
about it, too!”
“Can't we hush it up 2 ” said my uncle. -
“Hush it up!” retorted my aunt. “If you’d heard
the row, you wouldn't sit there and talk like a fool.”
“And if you'll take my advice,” added my aunt,
“you’ll set to work on this ‘training,” or whatever it is,
that has got to be done to the dog, before any human life
is lost.”
My uncle was too busy to devote any time to the dog
for the next day or so, and all that could be done was to
keep the animal carefully confined to the house.
And a nice time we had with him It was not that
the animal was bad-hearted. He meant well: he tried
to do his duty. What was wrong with him was that he
was too hard-working. He wanted to do too much. He
started with an exaggerated and totally erroneous notion
of his duties and responsibilities. His idea was that he
had been brought into the house for the purpose of pre-
venting any living human Soul from coming near it, and
of preventing any person who might by chance have
managed to slip in from ever again leaving it.
We endeavoured to induce him to take a less exalted
view of his position, but in vain. That was the concep-
tion he had formed in his own mind concerning his
earthly task, and that conception he insisted on living
up to with, what appeared to us to be, unnecessary
conscientiousness. - -
He so effectually frightened away all the tradespeople,
that they at last refused to even enter the gate. All that
13 -
I92 EVERGREENS.
they would do was to bring their goods and drop them
over the fence into the front garden, from where we had
to go and fetch them as we wanted them.
“I wish you’d run into the garden,”
my aunt would say to me—I was
stopping with them at
the time, –“ and see
... -- if you can find any
Sugar; I think there’s
Some under the big
rose-bush. If not,
you’d better go to Jones's
º º i y and order some.”
S. à. | t º And, on the cook's in-
Jºšſ *; , , º, . quiring what she should get
% § // } \, t ſº ready for lunch, my
& sº & 4Cſ % % \ aunt would say:
Wº 24 ğ §. * % “Well, I’m sure,
Kºmº Wº) #!'" Jane, I hardly know.
L º What have we? Are
Sº/ there any chops in the
garden, or was it a bit of steak that I noticed on the lawn 2''
On the second afternoon the plumbers came to do a
little job to the kitchen boiler. The dog, being engaged
at the time in the front of the house, driving away the
postman, did not notice their arrival. He was broken-
hearted at finding them there when he got downstairs,
and evidently blamed himself most bitterly. Still, there
they were, all owing to his carelessness, and the only thing
to be done now was to see that they did not escape.
There were three plumbers (it always takes three
plumbers to do a job : the first man comes on ahead to
tell you that the Second man will be there soon, the second


EVERGREENS. I93
man comes to say that he can't stop, and the third man
follows to ask if the first man has been there); and that
faithful, dumb animal kept them pinned up in the kitchen
—fancy wanting to keep plumbers in a house longer than
is absolutely necessary l—for five hours, until my uncle
came home; and the bill ran: “Self and two men engaged
six hours, repairing boiler-tap, 18s. ; materials, 2d.—total
I8s. 2d.”
He took a dislike to the cook from the very first. We
did not blame him for this. She was a disagreeable old
woman, and we did not think much of her ourselves. But
when it came to keeping her out of the kitchen, so that
she could not do her work, and my aunt and uncle had to
13 *

I94 EVERGREENS.
cook the dinner themselves, assisted by the housemaid—
a willing-enough girl, but necessarily inexperienced,—we
felt that the woman was being subjected to persecution.
My uncle, after this, decided that the dog's training
must be no longer neglected. The man next door but one
always talked as if he knew a lot about sporting matters, and
to him my uncle went for advice as to how to set about it.
“Oh yes,” said the man, cheerfully, “very simple
thing, training a bull-dog. Wants patience, that’s all.”
“Oh, that will be all right,” said my uncle; “it can't
want much more than living in the same house with him
before he’s trained does. How do you start 2 ”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said the next-door-but-one man.
“You take him up into a room where there’s not much
furniture, and you shut the door and bolt it.”
“I see,” said my uncle.
“Then you place him on the floor in the middle of the
room, and you go down on your knees in front of him, and
begin to irritate him.”
“Oh I ?”
“Yes, and you go on irritating him until you have
made him quite Savage.”
“Which, from what I know of the dog, won’t take
long,” observed my uncle, thoughtfully.
“So much the better. The moment he gets savage he
will fly at you.” .
My uncle agreed that the idea seemed plausible.
“He will fly at your throat,” continued the next-door-
but-one man, “and this is where you will have to be
careful. As he springs towards you, and before he gets
hold of you, you must hit him a fair straight blow on his
nose, and knock him down.”
“Yes, I see what you mean.”
EVERGREENS. I95
“Quite so, well, the moment you have knocked him
down, he will jump up and go for you again. You must
knock him down again; and you must keep on doing this
until the dog is thoroughly cowed and exhausted. Once
he is thoroughly cowed, the thing’s done,—dog’s as gentle
as a lamb after that.”
“Oh l’” said my uncle, rising from his chair, “you
think that a good way, do you?”
“Certainly,” replied the next-door-but-one man; “it
never fails.”
“Oh I wasn’t doubting it,” said my uncle; “only it’s
just occurred to me that, as you understand the knack of
these things, perhaps you'd like to come in and try your
hand on the dog 2 We can give you a room quite to
yourselves; and I’ll undertake that nobody comes near to
interfere with you. And if—if,” continued my uncle, with
that kindly thoughtfulness which ever distinguished his
treatment of others, “if, by any chance, you should miss
hitting the dog at the proper critical moment, or, if you
should get cowed and exhausted first, instead of the dog—
why, I shall only be too pleased to take the whole burden
of the funeral expenses on my own shoulders; and I
hope you know me well enough to feel sure that the
arrangements will be tasteful, and, at the same time,
unostentatious !” And out my uncle walked.
We next consulted the butcher, who agreed that the
prize-ring method was absurd, especially when recom-
mended to a short-winded, elderly, family man, and who
recommended instead plenty of out-door exercise, for
the dog, under my uncle's strict Supervision and control.
“Get a fairly long chain for him,” said the butcher,
“and take him out for a good stiff run every evening.
Never let him get away from you; make him mind you,
196 EVERGREENS.
and bring him home always thoroughly exhausted. You
stick to that for a month or two, regular, and you’ll have
him like a little child.”
“Um l—seems to me that I’m going to get more
training over this job than anybody else,” muttered my
uncle, as he thanked the man and left the shop; “but I
suppose it’s got to be done. Wish I’d never had the
d dog now !” -
So religiously every evening, my uncle would fasten a
long chain to that poor dog, and drag him away from
his happy home with the idea of exhausting him; and the
dog would come back as fresh as paint, my uncle behind
him, panting and clamouring for brandy.
My uncle said he should never have dreamed there
could have been such stirring times in this prosaic nine-
teenth century as he had experienced, training that dog.
Oh, the wild, wild scamperings over the breezy common,
the dog trying to catch a swallow, and my uncle, unable

EVERGREENS.
197
to hold him back, following at the other end of the chain
Oh, the merry frolics in the fields, when the dog
wanted to kill a cow, and the cow wanted to kill the dog,
and they each dodged round my uncle, trying to do it !
And, oh, the pleasant chats with the old ladies when
the dog wound the chain into a knot round their legs, and
upset them, and my uncle had to sit down in the road
beside them, and untie them before
they could get up again
But a crisis came at last. It
was a Saturday afternoon, — uncle
being exercised by dog in usual way,+
nervous children, playing in road, ,
See dog, Scream and run, playful
young dog thinks it a game, jerks
chain out of uncle's grasp, and flies
after them, -uncle flies after dog,
calling it names, – fond parent in
front garden, seeing beloved children
chased by savage dog, followed by
Careless Owner, flies after uncle, call-
ing him names,—householders come
to doors and cry, “Shame !”—also
throw things at dog, — things that
don't hit dog, hit uncle,_things that
don't hit uncle, hit fond parent,
through the village and up the hill,
over the bridge and round by the
green, grand run, mile and a half
without a break | Children sink ex-
hausted,— dog gambols up among
them,-children go into fits, fond
parent and uncle come up together,
both breathless.
63)

198 EVERGREENS.
“Why don't you call your dog off, you wicked old
man P” -
“Because I can’t recollect his name, you old fool,
you!”
Fond parent accuses uncle of having set dog on,
uncle, indignant, reviles fond parent, Lexasperated fond
parent attacks uncle,_uncle retaliates with umbrella,
faithful dog comes to assistance of uncle, and inflicts
great injury on fond parent, arrival of police,—dog
attacks police,—uncle and fond parent both taken into
custody, uncle fined five pounds and costs for keep-
ing a ferocious dog at large, Luncle fined five pounds and
costs for assault on fond parent, Luncle fined five pounds
and costs for assault on police
My uncle gave the dog away soon after that. He
did not waste him. He gave him as a wedding-present
to a near relation.
But the saddest story I ever heard in connection with
a bull-dog, was one told by my aunt herself.
Now you can rely upon this story, because it is not
one of mine, it is one of my aunt's, and she would scorn
to tell a lie. This is a story you could tell to the
heathen, and feel that you were teaching them the truth
and doing them good. They give this story out at all the
Sunday-schools in our part of the country, and draw
moral lessons from it. It is a story that a little child can
believe.
It happened in the old crinoline days. My aunt, who
was then living in a country-town, had gone out shopping
one morning, and was standing in the High Street, talking
to a lady friend, a Mrs. Gumworthy, the doctor's wife.
She (my aunt) had on a new crinoline that morning, in
which, to use her own expression, she rather fancied her-
EVERGREENS, I99
self. It was a tremendously big one, as stiff as a wire-
fence; and it “set" beautifully.
They were standing in front of Jenkins's, the draper's;
and my aunt thinks that it—the crinoline—must have
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got caught up in Something, and an opening thus left
between it and the ground. However this may be, cer
tain it is that an absurdly large and powerful bull-dog,
who was fooling round about there at the time, managed,
somehow or other, to Squirm in under my aunt’s crinoline,
and effectually imprison himself beneath it.
Finding himself suddenly in a dark and gloomy cham-
ber, the dog, naturally enough, got frightened, and made
frantic rushes to get out. But whichever way he charged,
there was the crinoline in front of him. As he flew, he,

200 EVERGREENS.
of course, carried it before him, and with the crinoline, of
course, went my aunt.
But nobody knew the explanation. My aunt herself
did not know what had happened. Nobody had seen the
dog creep inside the crinoline. All that the people did see
was a staid and eminently respectable middle-aged lady
suddenly, and without any apparent reason, throw her
umbrella down in the road, fly up the High Street at the
rate of ten miles an hour, rush across it at the imminent
risk of her life, dart down it again on the other side, rush
sideways, like an excited crab, into a grocer’s shop, run
three times round the shop, upsetting the whole stock-in-
trade, come out of the shop backwards and knock down a
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postman, dash into the roadway and spin round twice,
hover for a moment, undecided, on the curb, and then
away up the hill again, as if she had only just started, all

EVERGREENS. 2OI
the while screaming out at the top of her voice for some-
body to stop her
Of course, everybody thought that she was mad. The
people flew before her like chaff before the wind. In less
than five seconds the High Street was a desert. The
townsfolk scampered into their shops and houses and bar-
.ricaded the doors. Brave men dashed out and caught up
little children and bore them to places of safety amid
cheers. Carts and carriages were abandoned, while the
drivers climbed up lamp-posts
What would have happened had the affair gone on
much longer—whether my aunt would have been shot, or
the fire-engine brought into requisition against her—it is
impossible, having regard to the terrified state of the
crowd, to say. Fortunately for her, she became exhausted.
With one despairing shriek she gave way, and sat down
on the dog; and peace reigned once again in that sweet
rural town. •
CLOCKS.
CLOCKS.
H E R E are two kinds of clocks. There is
the clock that is always wrong, and that knows
it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the
clock that is always right—except when you rely upon it,
and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock
could be in a civilised country. •
I remember a clock of this latter type, that we had in
the house when I was a boy, routing us all up at three
o'clock one winter's morning. We had finished breakfast
at ten minutes to four, and I got to school a little after
five, and sat down on the step outside and
& !
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come to an end: everything was so - º
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up and telling it what he thinks of 2**
it, is either a dangerous rival to
that old-established firm, Job, or else he does not know
enough bad language to make it worth his while to start
saying anything at all. t
The great dream of its life is to lure you on into trying
to catch a train by it. For weeks and weeks it will keep
the most perfect time. If there were any difference in


2O6 CLOCKS.
time between that clock and the sun, you would be con-
vinced it was the sun, not the clock, that wanted seeing
to. You feel that if that clock happened to get a quarter
of a second fast, or the eighth of an instant slow, it would
break its heart and die. -
It is in this spirit of child-like faith in its integrity
that, one morning, you gather your family around you in
the passage, kiss your children, and afterwards wipe
your jammy mouth, poke your finger in the baby's eye,
promise not to forget to order the coals, wave a last
fond adieu with the umbrella, and
depart for the railway-station.
I never have been quite able to
decide, myself, which is the more
irritating: to run two miles at the
top of your speed, and then
to find, when you reach the
station, that you are three-
quarters of an hour too early ;
or to stroll along leisurely the
whole way, and dawdle about
outside the booking-office, talk-
ing to some local idiot, and then
to swagger carelessly on to the
platform, just in time to see
the train go out !
As for the other class of clocks—the common or
always-wrong clocks—they are harmless enough. You
wind them up at the proper intervals, and once or twice
a week you put them right and “regulate ’’ them, as you call
it (and you might just as well try to “regulate ’’ a London
Tom-cat). But you do all this, not from any selfish
motives, but from a sense of duty to the clock itself.


CLOCKS. 2O7
You want to feel that, whatever may happen, you have
done the right thing by it, and that no blame can attach
to you.
So far as looking to it for any return is concerned,
that you never dream of doing, and consequently you are
not disappointed. You ask what the time is, and the girl
replies:
“Well, the clock in the dining-room says a quarter-past.
tWO.
But you are not deceived by this. You know that, as
a matter of fact, it must be somewhere between nine and
ten in the evening; and, remembering that you noticed,

* . 14
2O8 CLOCKS.
as a curious circumstance, that the clock was only forty
minutes fast four hours ago, you mildly admire its energies
and resources, and wonder how it does it.
I myself possess a clock that for complicated uncon-
ventionality and light-hearted independence could, I
should think, give points to anything yet discovered in the
chronometrical line. As a mere timepiece, it leaves much
to be desired; but, considered as a self-acting conundrum,
it is full of interest and variety. -
I heard of a man once who had a clock that he used
to say was of no good to anyone except himself, because
he was the only man who understood it. He said it was
an excellent clock, and one that you could thoroughly de-
pend upon ; but you wanted to know it—to have studied
its system. An outsider might be easily misled by it.
“For instance,” he would say, “when it strikes fifteen,
and the hands point to twenty minutes past eleven, I
know it is a quarter to eight.”
His acquaintanceship with that clock must certainly
have given him an advantage over the cursory observer !
But the great charm about my clock is its reliable
uncertainty. It works on no method whatever; it is a
pure emotionalist. One day it will be quite frolicsome,
and gain three hours in the course of the morning, and
think nothing of it; and the next day it will wish it were
dead, and be hardly able to drag itself along, and lose two
hours out of every four, and stop altogether in the after-
noon, too miserable to do anything ; and then, getting
cheerful once more towards evening, will start off again
of its own accord.
I do not care to talk much about this clock; because
when I tell the simple truth concerning it, people think I
am exaggerating.
CLOCKS. 209
It is very discouraging to find, when you are straining
every nerve to tell the truth, that people do not believe
you, and fancy that you are exaggerating. It makes you
feel inclined to go and exaggerate on purpose, just to show
them the difference. I know I often feel tempted to do
so myself: it is my early training that saves me.
We should always be very careful never to give way to
exaggeration; it is a habit that grows upon One.
And it is such a vulgar habit, too. In the old times,
when poets and dry-goods salesmen were the only people
who exaggerated, there was something clever and distingué
about a reputation for “a tendency to over- rather than
to under-estimate the mere bald facts.” But everybody
exaggerates now-a-days. The art of exaggeration is no
longer regarded as an “extra" in the modern bill of
education; it is an essential requirement, held to be most
needful for the battle of life.
The whole world exaggerates. It exaggerates every-
thing, from the yearly number of bicycles sold, to the
yearly number of heathens converted—into the hope of
Salvation and more whisky. Exaggeration is the basis
of our trade, the fallow-field of our art and literature, the
groundwork of our social life, the foundation of our
political existence. As Schoolboys, we exaggerate our
fights and Our marks and Our fathers' debts. As men, we
exaggerate our wares, we exaggerate our feelings, we
exaggerate our incomes—except to the tax-collector, and
to him we exaggerate our “outgoings,”—we exaggerate
our virtues; we even exaggerate our vices, and, being in
reality the mildest of men, pretend we are dare-devil
Scamps.
We have sunk so low now that we try to act our exag-
gerations, and to live up to our lies. We call it “keeping
14 *
2IO CLOCKS.
up appearances”; and no more bitter phrase could,
perhaps, have been invented to describe our childish
folly. -
If we possess a hundred pounds a year, do we not call
it two 2 Our larder may be low and our grates be chill,
but we are happy if the “world” (six acquaintances and a
prying neighbour) give us credit for one hundred and fifty.
And, when we have five hundred, we talk of a thousand,
and the all-important and beloved “world” (sixteen friends
now, and two of them carriage-folk |) agree that we really
must be spending seven hundred, or, at all events, run-
ning into debt up to that figure; but the butcher and
2.
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baker, who have gone into the matter with the housemaid,
know better. -
After a while, having learnt the trick, we launch out
boldly and spend like Indian Princes—or rather seem to

















CLOCKS. 2II
spend; for we know, by this time, how to purchase the
seeming with the seeming, how to buy the appearance of
wealth with the appearance of cash. And the dear old
world,—Beelzebub bless it ! for it is his own child, sure
enough : there is no mistaking the likeness, it has all his
funny little ways, gathers round, applauding and laugh-
ing at the lie, and sharing in the cheat, and gloating over
the thought of the blow that it knows must sooner or later
fall on us from the Thor-like hammer of Truth.
And all goes merry as a witches' frolic—until the grey
morning dawns. -
Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my
friends, fit only for the dull and vulgar to live by. Appear-
ance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these
clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we
build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land
of shadow and chimera.
To ourselves, sleeping and waking there, behind the
rainbow, there is no beauty in the house; only a chill,
damp mist in every room, and, over all, a haunting fear of
the hour when the gilded clouds will melt away, and let us
fall—somewhat heavily, no doubt—upon the hard world
underneath. .
But, there! of what matter is our misery, our terror
To the stranger, our home appears fair and bright. The
workers in the fields below look up and envy us our abode
of glory and delight ! If they think it pleasant, surely we
should be content. Have we not been taught to live for
others and not for ourselves, and are we not acting up
bravely to the teaching—in this most curious method 2
Ah! yes, we are self-sacrificing enough, and loyal
enough in our devotion to this new-crowned king, the
child of Prince Imposture and Princess Pretence. Never
2I2 CLOCKS.
before was despot so blindly worshipped Never had
earthly sovereign yet such world-wide sway !
Man, if he would live, must worship. He looks around,
and what to him, within the vision of his life, is the
greatest and the best, that he falls down and does rever-
ence to. To him whose eyes have opened on the nineteenth
century, what nobler image can the universe produce than
the figure of Falsehood in stolen robes It is cunning
and brazen and hollow-hearted, and it realises his soul's
ideal, and he falls and kisses its feet, and clings to its
skinny knees, swearing fealty to it for evermore
Ah! he is a mighty monarch, bladder-bodied King
Humbugl Come, let us build up temples of hewn
shadows wherein we may adore him, safe from the light.
Let us raise him aloft upon our Brummagem shields.
Long live our coward, false-hearted
s chief!—fit leader for such soldiers
* as wel Long live the Lord-of-Lies,
anointed Long live poor King
Appearances, to whom all mankind
bows the kneel
But we must hold him
aloft very carefully, O my
brother warriors | He needs
much “keeping up.” He
has no bones and sinews of
his own, the poor old flimsy
à fellow ! If we take our hands
* wrºs from him, he will fall a heap
of worn-out rags, and the
angry wind will whirl him away, and leave us forlorn.
Oh, let us spend our lives keeping him up, and serving
him, and making him great—that is, evermore puffed



CLOCKS. 2I3
out with air and nothingness—until he burst, and we
along with him
Burst one day he must, as it is in the nature of bub-
bles to burst, especially when they grow big. Meanwhile,
he still reigns over us, and the world grows more and
more a world of pretence and exaggeration and lies; and
he who pretends and exaggerates and lies the most
successfully, is the greatest of us all.
The world is a gingerbread fair, and we all stand
outside our booths and point to the gorgeous-coloured
pictures, and beat the big drum and brag. Brag, Bragſ
Life is one great game of brag
“Buy my soap, O ye people, and ye will never
look old, and the hair will grow again on your bald
places, and ye will never be poor or unhappy again;
and mine is the only true soap. Oh, beware of spurious
imitations !”
“Buy my lotion, all ye that suffer from pains in the
head, or the stomach, or the feet, or that have broken
arms, or broken hearts, or objectionable mothers-in-law;
and drink one bottle a day,
and all your troubles will be
ended.”
“Come to my church, all
ye that want to go to Heaven,
and buy my penny weekly
guide, and pay my pew-rates,
and, pray ye, have nothing
to do with my misguided
brother over the road. This
is the only safe way !”
“Oh, vote for me, my
noble and intelligent electors,
|
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2I4 CLOCKS.
and send our party into power, and the world shall be a
new place, and there shall be no sin or sorrow any more!
And each free and independent voter shall have a bran-
new Utopia made on purpose for him, according to his
own ideas, with a good sized, extra-unpleasant Purgatory
attached, to which he can send everybody he does not
like. Oh, do not miss this chance l’’
Oh! listen to my philosophy, it is the best and deepest.
Oh! hear my songs, they are the Sweetest. Oh I buy my
pictures, they alone are true art. Oh I read my books,
they are the finest. -
Oh! I am the greatest cheesemonger, I am the greatest
soldier, I am the greatest statesman, I am the greatest
poet, I am the greatest showman, I am the greatest
mountebank, I am the greatest editor, and I am the
greatest patriot. We are the greatest nation. We are the
only good people. Ours is the only true religion. Bah!
how we all yell !
How we all brag and bounce, and beat the drum and
shout! And nobody believes a word we utter; and the
people ask one another, saying: º
“How can we tell who is the greatest, and the cleverest
among all these shrieking braggarts 2'"
And they answer:
“There is none great or `clever. The great and
clever men are not here; there is no place for them
in this pandemonium of charlatans and quacks. The
men you see here are but crowing cocks. We suppose
the greatest and the best of them, are they who crow
the loudest and the longest ; that is the only test of their
merits.” -
Therefore, what is left for us to do, but to crow 2 And
the best and greatest of us all, is he who crows the loudest
CLOCKS. 215
and the longest on this little dunghill that we call our
world !
Well, I was going to tell you about our clock.
It was my wife's idea, getting it, in the first instance.
We had been to dinner at the Buggles's, and Buggles had
just bought a clock—“picked it up in Essex,” was the way
he described the transaction. Buggles is always going
about “picking up ’’ things. He will stand before an old
carved bedstead, weighing about three tons, and say:
“Yes—pretty little thing ! I picked it up in Holland; ”
as though he had found it by the roadside, and slipped it
into his umbrella when nobody was looking !
Buggles was rather full of this clock. It was of the
good old-fashioned “grandfather” type. It stood eight
feet high, in a carved-oak case, and had a deep, sonorous,
Solemn tick, that made a pleasant accompaniment to the
after-dinner chat, and seemed to fill the room with an air
of homely dignity.
We discussed the clock, and Buggles said how he
loved the sound of its slow, grave tick; and how, when all
the house was still, and he and it were sitting up alone
together, it seemed like some wise old friend talking to
him, and telling him about the old days, and the old ways
of thought, and the old life, and the old people.
The clock impressed my wife very much. She was
very thoughtful all the way home, and, as we went up-
stairs to our flat, she said, “ Why could not we have a
clock like that ?” She said it would seem like having
someone in the house to take care of us all—she should
fancy it was looking after baby! |
I have a man in Northamptonshire from whom I buy
old furniture now and then, and to him I applied. He
answered by return to say that he had got exactly the
2I6 CLOCKS,
very thing I wanted. (He always has. I am very lucky
in this respect.) It was the quaintest and most old-
fashioned clock he had come across for a long while, and
he enclosed photograph and full particulars; should he
send it up 2
From the photograph and the particulars, it seemed,
as he said, the very thing, and I told him, “Yes; send it
up at once.”
Three days afterwards, there came a knock at the
door, there had been other knocks at the door before
this, of course; but I am dealing merely with the history
of the clock. The girl said a couple of men were outside,
and wanted to see me, and I went to them.
I found they were Pickford's carriers, and, glancing at
the way-bill, I saw that it was my clock that they had
brought, and I said, airily, “Oh, yes, it’s quite right;
bring it up !”
They said they were very sorry, but that was just the
difficulty. They could not get it up.
I went down with them, and, wedged securely across the
second landing of the staircase, I found a box, which I
should have judged to be the original case in which
Cleopatra's Needle came over.
They said that was my clock.
I brought down a chopper and a crowbar, and we sent
out and collected in two extra hired ruffians, and the five
of us worked away for half an hour, and got the clock
out; after which the traffic up and down the staircase
was resumed, much to the satisfaction of the other tenants.
We then got the clock upstairs and put it together,
and I fixed it in a corner of the dining-room.
At first it exhibited a strong desire to topple over and
fall on people, but by the liberal use of nails and screws
CLOCKS. 217
and bits of firewood, I made life in the same room with
it possible, and then, being exhausted, I had my wounds
dressed, and went to bed.
In the middle of the night, my wife woke me up in a
great state of alarm, to say that the clock had just struck
thirteen, and who did I think was going to die 2
I said I did not know, but hoped it might be the next-
door dog. -
My wife said she had a presentiment it meant baby.
There was no comforting her : she cried herself to sleep
again.
During the course of the morning, I succeeded in
persuading her that she must have made a mistake, and
she consented to smile once more. In the afternoon the
clock struck thirteen again.
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218 * CLOCKS.
This renewed all her fears. She was convinced now
that both baby and I were doomed, and that she would
soon be left a childless widow. I tried to treat the matter
as a joke, and this only made her more wretched. She
said that she could see I really felt as she did, and was
only pretending to be light-hearted for her sake, and she
said she would try and bear it bravely.
The person she chiefly blamed was Buggles.
In the night, the clock gave us another warning, and
my wife accepted it for her Aunt Maria, and seemed
resigned. She wished, however, that I had never had
the clock, and wondered when, if ever, I should get

CLOCKS. - - 2I9
cured of my absurd craze for filling the house with
tomfoolery.
The next day the clock struck thirteen four times,
and this cheered her up. She said that if we were all
going to die, it did not so much matter. Most likely
there was a fever or a plague coming, and we should all
be taken together.
She was quite lighthearted over it !
After that, the clock went on and killed every friend
and relation we had, and then it started on the neighbours.
It struck thirteen all day long for months, until we
were sick of slaughter, and there could not have been
a human being left alive for miles round.
Then it turned over a new leaf, and gave up murdering
folks, and took to striking mere harmless thirty-nines and
forty-ones. Its favourite number now is thirty-two, but,
once a day, it strikes forty-nine. It never strikes more
than forty-nine. I don’t know why, -I have never been
able to understand why, but it doesn't.
It does not strike at regular intervals, but when it
feels it wants to and would be better for it. Sometimes
it strikes three or four times within the same hour,
and at other times it will go for half-a-day without
Striking at all.
He is an odd old fellow !
I have thought now and then of having him “seen to,”
and made to keep regular hours and be respectable; but,
Somehow, I seem to have grown to love him as he is with
his daring mockery of Time.
He certainly has not much respect for it. He seems to
go out of his way almost to openly insult it. He calls half.
past two thirty-eight o'clock, and in twenty minutes from
then he says it is one
22O CLOCKS.
Is it that he really has grown to feel contempt for his
master, and wishes to show it 2 They say no man is a
hero to his valet ; may it be that even stony-faced Time
himself is but a short-lived puny mortal—a little greater
than some others, that is all—to the dim eyes of this old
servant of his 2 Has he, ticking, ticking, all these years,
come at last to see into the littleness of that Time that
looms so great to our awed human eyes 2
Is he saying, as he grimly laughs, and strikes his
thirty-fives and forties: “Bah! I know you, Time, godlike
and dread though you seem. What are you but a
phantom—a dream—like the rest of us here 2 Ay, less, for
you will pass away and be no more. Fear him not,
immortal men. Time is but the shadow of the world upon
the background of Eternity l’’ -
TEA- KETTLES.
TEA –KETTLES.
a kettle full of boiling water off the fire, and,
placing it on your outstretched hand, carry it
round the room without suffering any hurt to yourself
whatever, unless, of course, the thing upsets.
It is necessary to be sure that the water actually boils,
as otherwise you will burn your hand; and it is also as
well to look and see that there are no hot cinders clinging
to the bottom of the kettle. These two rules observed,
the exercise may be indulged in with much success.
The explanation of the seeming phenomenon is very
simple. The heat from the fire passes through the kettle
and into the water, and thus, as soon as the water boils,
the kettle, as anyone who has studied science and those sort
of things will readily understand, becomes cool, and may
be carried about in the way I have explained instead of
by the handle.
For myself, I generally adopt the handle method, not-
withstanding, and take a towel to it. I did try the
scientific way once, but I do not think the water could
have been boiling ; and that, as I have explained, is a
very important point, because, except when the water is
actually boiling, the kettle is hot, and you are apt to say:
“Oh Damn !” and drop it, and the water splashes out
I' is asserted by scientific men that you can take
15
224 TEA- KETTLES.
all over the floor. And then all the folks you have invited
into the kitchen to witness this triumph of Science, they
say “Oh Damn !” too, and skip about in a disorderly
manner, and flick their feet in the air, and rush out into
the passage, where they sit down on the cool oilcloth,
and try to take off both boots at once.
I do not know how it is, but I have generally found a
certain amount of variance between theory and practice.
I remember they told me, when I was learning swimming,
that if I lay flat on my back, with my arms extended, and
kept perfectly still, I could not sink—not even if I wanted
to. I don't know why they should have thought that I wanted
to ; but they evidently considered that there was a chance

TEA-KETTLES. 225
of my trying to do so, and that it was only kind of them
to advise me not to, as the effort could only result in dis-
appointment and loss of time. I might, if I stopped
there on the water long enough, die of starvation or old
age; or I might, in the case of a fog coming on, be run
down by a boat and killed that way; but sink and be
drowned, they assured me, I could not be. For a man to
sink when lying on his back on the water was an utter
impossibility: they worked this out on a slate, and made
it quite clear to me, so that I saw it for myself.
And day after day, I would go down to the Sea and
place myself on the water in
that position in which, as I e -
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tº , c. P. &; 2--> - 2.
to the laws of nature that I — ‘ ‘º **śs
should sink, and invariably and * T--------ºr
promptly go straight down to - ====,
the bottom, head foremost
Then there is that theory of the power of the human
eye, and how it will subdue cows and other wild beasts.
I tried that once. I was crossing a field near a farm-
house at which I was staying; and, just when I had
nearly reached the middle, and was about three hundred
yards from the handiest fence, I became aware of the
fact that I was being regarded with quite an embarrassing
amount of attention by an active and intelligent-looking
cow. I took it at first as a compliment, and thought
that I had mashed the cow; but when she slewed her
head round so as to bring the point of her left horn
exactly opposite the pit of my stomach, and began to
sling her tail round and round in a circle, and foam at the
mouth, I concluded that there must be something more
in her mind than a mere passing fancy)
15 + *
226 - TEA-KETTLES.
And then it suddenly occurred to me that it was be-
cause of this very cow I had been warned not to go near
this very field. The poor animal had lately suffered a
Severe mental strain, owing to having been de-
prived of her offspring, and had evidently deter-
mined to re-
lieve her over-
burdened feel-
ings on the very
first living thing
º that came fooling
% around.
Well, there I
was, and what
was I to do 2 I paused for a moment, wondering. At
first I thought I would lie down and pretend to be dead.
I had read somewhere that if you lie down and pretend
to be dead, the most savage animal will never touch you.
I forget the reason why it will not ; I rather think it is
supposed to be because it is disappointed at not having
had the fun of killing you itself. That makes it sulky,
and it will have nothing to do with you. Or else its con-
science is touched in some way, and the result of the
deed it has been contemplating brought home to it; so
that it goes away full of thankfulness at having been
kept from a great crime, and determines to be a better
beast for the future. -
But, as I was preparing to drop down, the thought
struck me: Was it all beasts that felt this way when
they saw a man shamming dead, or was it only lions and
tigers ? I could not call to mind any instance of a
traveller having escaped from a Jersey cow by this device;
and to lie down in front of the animal, if it were merely


TEA-KETTLES. 227
going to take advantage of your doing so to jump on you,
seemed unwise.
Then, too, how about getting up again P In the
African desert, of course, you wait until the animal has
gone home; but, in this case, the cow lived in the field,
and I should have to go on pretending to be dead for
perhaps a week'
No ; I would try the power of the human eye. The
human eye has a very wonderful effect upon animals, so I
have been informed. No animal can bear its steady gaze.
Under its influence a vague sense of terror gradually
steals over the creature's senses; and, after vainly battling
for a while against its irresistible power, the animal in-
variably turns and flies.
So I opened my right eye to its fullest extent, and
fixed it hard on that unfortunate cow. -
“I will not unduly terrify the poor thing,” I said to
myself. “I will just frighten her a little, and then let
her go ; and I will, afterwards, return the way I came,
and not needlessly pain her by crossing the field any
further.” -
But what appeared so extraordinary to my mind was,
that the cow showed no signs of alarm
whatever. “A vague sense of terror.”
began to gradually—I may say rapidly
—steal over one of us, it is certain;
but that one was not the cow. I can
hardly expect anyone to believe it; but
as a matter of fact the cow's eye, fixed
with an intensely malevolent expression
upon myself, caused more uneasiness
to me than did my eye to the cow !
I glared at her harder than ever.
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228 TEA- KETTLES.
All my feelings of kindly consideration towards the brute
were gone. I should not have minded now if I had sent
her into fits.
But she bore up under it. Nay, she did more. She
lowered her head, slung up her tail stiff at right angles to
her back, and, roaring, made towards me.
Then I lost all faith in the power of the human eye,
and tried the power of the human leg; and reached
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the other side of the fence with the sixteenth of a second
to spare.
No; it is not well to rule oneself by theories. We
think, when we are very young, that theories, or
“ philosophies " as we term them, are guiding lights,
held out by Wisdom over the pathway of life; we learn,
as we grow older, that, too often, they are mere will-o'-





TEA-KETTLES. 229
&
the-wisps, hovering over dismal swamps where dead
men's bones lie rotting.
We stand with our hand upon the helm of our little
bark, and we gather round us in a heap the log-books
of the great dead captains that have passed over the Sea
before us. We note with care their course; and, in our
roll of memory, we mark their soundings, and we learn
their words of counsel, and their wise maxims, and all
the shrewd, deep thoughts that came to them during the
long years they sailed upon those same troubled waters
that are heaving round us now.
Their experience shall be our compass. Their voices,
whispering in our ear, shall be our pilot. By the teaching
of their silent lips will we set our sails to the unseen
wind. w
But the closer we follow the dog's-eared logs, the
wilder our poor craft tosses. The wind that filled the
sails of those vanished ships blew not as blows the wind
that strains our masts this day; and where they rode
in safety, we run aground on reefs and banks, and our
quivering timbers creak and groan, and we are well-nigh
wrecked. -
We must close those fading pages. They can teach
us to be brave sailors, but they cannot tell us how to
Sail. *
Over the sea of Life each must guide the helm for
himself: and none can give us aid or counsel; for no one
knows, nor ever has known, the pathway over that track-
less ocean. In the Heavens above us shines the sun :
and when the night falls, the stars come forth; and by
these, looking upward, we must steer, and God be with us
on the waters | -
For the sea of Life is very deep, and no man knows
230 TEA-KETTLES.
its soundings, and no man knows its hidden shoals and
rocks, nor the strong currents flowing underneath its
sunny surface; for its sands are ever shifting, and its
tides are ever varying, and for the ships upon its waves.
there is no chart. -
The sea of Life is vast and boundless, and no man
knows its shores. For many thousand ages have its
waters flowed and ebbed, and ever, day by day, from out
the mist have come the little ships into the light, and
beckoned with their ghost-like sails, and passed away;
and no man knows from whence they came, and no man
knows the whither they have gone. And to each ship it
is an unknown sea, and, over it, they sail to reach an
unknown land; and where that land lies none can tell.
The sailors that have gone before who are they, that
we should follow them 2 For a brief day they have lain
tossed upon the heaving waters: for a short hour they
have clung to their poor bark of Time; and on the restless
current it has drifted, and before the fitful wind it has
been wafted, and over the deep they have passed into the
darkness; and never more have they returned, and never
more, though eyes, washed clear with bitter tears, have
strained to pierce the gloom, have they or their frail ships
been seen. Behind them the waters have closed up, and,
of the way they went, there is no trail. Who are they,
that they should draw a chart of this great ocean, and
that we should trust to it?
What saw they of the mighty sea, but the waves lap-
ping around their keel ? They knew not the course they
had sailed; they knew not the harbour that they sought.
In the night they foundered and went down, and its lights
they never saw.
The log of their few days' cruise, telling the struggles
TEA-KETTLES. 231
and dangers of their ship as it sailed, among so many
myriad others, let us read and learn from ; but their
soundings of this fathomless sea, their tracings of its
unseen shores, of what value are they, but as guesses to
riddles whose answers are lost P Do moles draw maps of
the world for the guidance of other moles 2
In all things do we not listen too much to the voices of
our brothers, especially in those matters wherein they are
least able to instruct us? Is there not in the world too
much pulpit-preaching of this doctrine, and too much
novel and essay-writing against that, and too much shriek-
ing out of directions to this truth and of warnings against
that ; so that, amid the shrieking and the thumping of so
many energetic ladies and gentlemen, the still, low voice
of God himself, speaking to our souls, gets quite drowned P
Ever since this world was set a-spinning we have been
preaching and lecturing, and crusading and pamphleteer-
ing, and burning and advising each other into the way to
go to Heaven; and we are still hard at it, and we are still
all rushing about as confused and bewildered as ever, and
nobody knows who is right, but we are all convinced that
everybody else is wrong ! -
This way, that way, not the other way, we cry.
“Here is the path, the only path; follow me, unless
you wish to be lost l”
“Follow him not He is leading you wrong l’” says
another. “I alone know the way !”
“No, no, heed neither of them l’’ says a third. “This
is the road. I have just found it. All the roads men
have gone by before have led them wrong; but we shall
be all right now : follow me !”
In one age, by Sword and fire, and other kinds of
eloquent appeal, we drive men up to Heaven through
232 TEA-KETTLES.
one gate, and in the next generation we furiously chase
them away from that same gate; for we have discovered
that it is a wrong gate, and leads, in fact, to perdition,
and we hurry them off by another route entirely.
So, like chickens in a dusty highway, we scuttle round
and round, and spin about and cry, and none of us knows
the way home.
It is sincerely to be hoped that we do all get to this
Heaven one day, wherever it may be. We make hulla-
balloo enough about it, and struggle hard enough to
squeeze in. We do not know very much what it is like.
Some fancy it is an exhibition of gold and jewels; and
others, that it is a sort of everlasting musical “At Home.”
But we are all agreed that it is a land where we shall live
well and not do any work, and we are going to have every-
thing our own way and be very happy; and the people we
do not like will not be allowed in.
It is a place, we have made up our minds, where all
the good things of the other world are going to be given
away; and, oh, how anxious we all are to be well to the
front there !
Perhaps there are others, though, not of the piously
self-Sº.eking crew, to whom Heaven only means a wider
sphere of thought and action, a clearer vision, a nobler
life, nearer to God; and these, walking through the dark-
ness of this world, “stretch lame hands of faith and
grope,” trying to find the light. And so many are shout-
ing out directions to them, and they that know the least
shout the loudest
Yes, yes, they are clever and earnest, these shouters,
and they have thought, and have spoken the thought that
was in them, so far as they have understood it themselves;
but what is it all, but children teaching children 2 We are
TEA-KETTLEs. 233
poor little fatherless brats, let to run wild about the streets
and alleys of this noisy earth; and the wicked urchins
among us play pitch-and-toss or marbles, and fight; and
we quiet ones sit on a doorstep and play at Schools, and
little 'Liza Philosophy and Tommy Goodboy will take it
in turn to be “teacher,” and will roar at us, and slap us,
and instruct us in all they have learnt. And, if we are
good and pay attention, we shall come to know as much
as they do : think of that -
Come away—come away from the gutter and the tire-
some game. Come away from the din. Come away to
the quiet fields, over which the great sky stretches, and
where, between us and the stars, there lies but silence ;
and there, in the stillness let us listen to the voice that is
speaking within us.
Hark to it, O poor questioning children; it is the
voice of God To the mind of each of us it speaks, show-
ing the light to our longing eyes, making all things clear
to us, if we will but follow it. All through the weary days
of doubt and terror, has it been whispering words of
strength and comfort to our aching heart and brain, point-
ing out the path through the darkness to the knowledge
and truth that our souls so hunger for ; and, all the while,
we have been straining our ears to catch the silly wisdom
of the two-legged human things that cackle round us, and
have not heeded it ! Let us have done with other men's
teaching, other men's guidance. Let us listen to ourselves.
No, you cannot tell what you have learnt to others.
That is what so many are trying to do. They would not
understand you, and it would only help to swell the foolish
din. The truths he has taught to us, we cannot teach to
our fellow-men : none but God himself can speak their
language, from no other voice but his can they be heard,
234 TEA-KETTLES.
... —“The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep
silence before him.”
The serious and the comic seem to be for ever playing
hide-and-seek with one another in and out our lives, like
light and shadow through an April day; and ofttimes they,
as children in a game, catch one another and embrace,
and, with their arms entwined, lean for a space upon each
other before the chase begins afresh. I was walking up and
down the garden, following out this very idea—namely, of
the childishness of our trying to teach one another in
matters that we know so little of ourselves—when, on pass-
ing the summer-house, I overheard my argument being
amusingly illustrated by
my eldest niece, aged
seven, who was sitting
very upright in a very big
chair, giving information
to her younger sister, aged
five, on the subject of
“Babies : their origin,
discovery, and use.”
“You know, babies,”
she was remarking in con-
clusion, “ain't like dollies.
Babies is 'live. Nobody
gives you babies till you’re
growed up. An’ they’re
very improper. We 're
not s’posed to talk 'bout
such things—we was
babies once.”
She is a very thoughtful child, is my eldest niece. Her
thirst for knowledge is a most praiseworthy trait in her
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TEA-KETTLES. 235
character, but has rather an exhausting effect upon the
rest of the family. We limit her now to seven hundred
questions a day. After she has asked seven hundred
questions, and we have answered them, or, rather, as
many as we are able, we boycott her; and she retires to
bed, indignant, asking :
“Why only seven hundred 2 Why not eight?”
Nor is her range of inquiry what you would call
narrow or circumscribed at all. It embraces most
subjects that are known as yet to civilisation, from
abstract theology to cats ; from the failure of mar-
riage to chocolate, and why you must not take it out
and look at it when you have once put it inside your
mouth. - -
She has her own opinion, too, about most of these
matters, and expresses it with a freedom which is apt to
shock respectably-brought-up folk. I am not over Ortho-
dox myself, but she staggers even me at times. Her
theories are too advanced for me at present.
She has not given much attention to the matter of
babies hitherto. It is only this week that she has gone in
for that subject. The explanation is—I hardly like men-
tioning it. Perhaps it—I don't know, I don't see that
there can be any harm in it, though. Yet—well, the
fact of the matter is, there is an “event ’’ expected
in our family, or rather, in my brother-in-law's ; and
there ! you know how these things get discussed among
relations, and May, that is my niece's name, is one of
those children that you are always forgetting is about,
and never know how much it has heard and how much
it has not.
The child said nothing, however, and all seemed
right until last Sunday afternoon. It was a wet day,
236 TEA-KETTLES.
and I was reading in the breakfast-parlour, and Emily
was sitting on the sofa, looking at an album of Swiss
views with Dick Chetwyn. Dick and Emily are en-
gaged. Dick is a steady young fellow, and Emily loves
him dearly, I am sure; but they both suffer, in my
opinion, from an over-sense of modesty. As for Emily,
it does not so much matter: girls are like that before
they are married. But in Dick it seems out of place.
They both of them flare up quite scarlet at the simplest
joke even. They always make me think of Gilbert's
bashful young couple. -
Well, there we were, sitting round, the child on the
floor, playing with her bricks. She had been very quiet
for about five minutes, and I was just wondering what
could be the matter with her, when, all of a sudden, and
without a word of warning, she observed, in the most
casual tone of voice, while continuing her building
operations: -

TEA-KETTLES. 237
“Is Auntie Cissy goin' to have a little boy-baby, or a
little girl-baby, uncle P’’
“Oh, don’t ask silly questions; she hasn’t made up
her mind yet.” -
“Oh, oh! I think I should 'vise her to have a little
girl, 'cause little girls ain’t so much trouble as boys, is
they 2 Which would you 'vise her to have, uncle?”
“Will you go on with your bricks, and not talk
about things you don’t understand 2 We’re not sup-
posed to talk about those sort of things at all. It isn’t
proper.” -
“What isn't p’oper ? Ain't babies p’oper ?”
“No ; very improper, especially some of them.”
“’Umph! then what’s people have 'em for, if they
isn’t p’oper?”
“Will you go on with your bricks, or will you not 2
How much oftener am I to speak to you, I wonder?
People can't help having them. They are sent to chasten
us; to teach us what a worrying, drive-you-mad sort of
world this is, and we have to put up with them. But
there's no need to talk about them.”
There was silence for a few minutes, and then came :
“Does Uncle Henry know? He'll be her puppa,
won’t he 2''
“Eh! What? Know what? What are you talking
about now 2°
“Does Uncle Henry know 'bout this baby that Auntie
Cissy's goin’ to have 2 ”
“Yes, of course, you little idiot!—Does Uncle Henry
know !” - w
“Yes—I s'pose they'd tell him, 'cause, you see, he’ll
have to pay for it, won’t he 2°
“Well, nobody else will if he doesn't.”
238 TEA-KETTLES.
“It costs heaps and heaps and HEAPs of money, a
baby, don’t it 2 ”
“Yes, heaps.”
“Two Shillin’s P’’
“Oh, more than that "
“Yes, I s'pose they’re very 'spensive. Could I have a
baby, uncle 2 ”
“Oh, yes; two.”
“No, really On my birthday ?”
“Oh, don't be so silly Babies are not dolls. Babies
are alive | You don’t buy them. You are given them
when you are grown up.”
“Shall I have a baby when I'm growed up 2 ”
“Oh, it all depends ! And don’t say “growed up.’
You've been told that before. It’s “grown up,” not
‘growed up.' I don't know where you get your English
from.”
“When I’m growned up, then. Shall I have a baby
when I’m growned up 2 ”
“Oh, bother the child! Yes, if you're good and don’t
worry, and get married.”

TEA-KETTLES, 239
“What’s ‘married ?? What mumma and puppa is 2 ”
“Yes.” -
“And what Auntie Emily and Mr. Chetwyn is goin'
to be 2 °
“Yes; don’t talk so much.”
“Oh I can't you have a baby 'less you're married ?”
“No, certainly not.”
“Oh! Will Auntie Emily have a »
“Go ON witH YOUR BRICKS! I'll take those bricks
away from you, if you don't play quietly with them. You
never hear me or your father ask silly questions like that.
You haven’t learnt your lessons for to-morrow yet, you
know.” -
Confound the child ! I can’t make out where children
get their notions from, confounded little nuisances !
Let me see, what was I writing about 2 Oh! I know,
“Tea-kettles.” Yes, it ought to be rather an interesting
subject, “Tea-kettles.” I should think a man might
write a very good article on “Tea-kettles.” I must have
a try at it one of these days
16
A PATHETIC STORY.
16*
A PATHETIC STORY.
*
66 H ! I want you to write the pathetic story for
the Christmas number, if you will, old man,”
said the editor of the Weekly journal to
me, as I poked my head into his den one Sunny July
ºr -*.
§ {
f
| ..?
- f /
: ;
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—“.
**_ºy sº *
º
morning, some years ago. “Thomas is anxious to have
the comic sketch. He says he overheard a joke last
week, that he thinks he can work up. I expect I shall

244 A PATHETIC STORY.
have to do the cheerful love story, about the man that
everybody thinks is dead and that turns up on Christmas-
eve and marries the girl, myself. I was hoping to get
out of it this time, but I’m afraid I can’t. Then I shall
get Miggs to do the charitable appeal business. I think
he’s the most experienced man we have now for that ;
and Skittles can run off the cynical column, about the
Christmas bills, and the indigestion: he's always very
good in a cynical article, Skittles is ; he’s got just the
correct don’t-know-what-he-means-himself sort of touch
for it, if you understand.”
“Skittles,” I may mention, was the nickname we
had given to a singularly emotional and seriously in-
clined member of the staff, whose correct cognomen was
Beherhend.
Skittles himself always waxed particularly sentimental
over Christmas. During the week preceding that sacred
festival, he used to go about literally swelling with
geniality and affection for all man and womankind. He
would greet comparative strangers with a burst of delight
that other men would
have found difficult to
work up in the case of
a rich relation, and
would shower upon
them the good wishes,
always so plentiful and
cheap at that season,
with such an evident
conviction that prac-
tical benefit to the
wishee would ensue
"therefrom as to send

A PATHETIC STORY. 245
them away labouring under a vague sense of obligation.
The sight of an old friend at that period was almost
dangerous to him. His feelings would quite overcome him.
He could not speak. You feared that he would burst.
He was generally quite laid up on Christmas-day itself,
owing to having drunk so many Sentimental toasts on
Christmas-eve. I never saw such a man as Skittles for
proposing and drinking sentimental toasts. He would
drink to “dear old Christmas-time,” and to “dear old
England; ” and then he would drink to his mother, and
all his other relations, and to “lovely woman,” and “old
chums,” or he would propose “Friendship,” in the abstract,
“may it never grow cool in the heart of a true-born
Briton,” and “Love—may it ever look out at us from the
eyes of our sweethearts and wives,” or even “The Sun—
that is ever shining behind the clouds, dear boys, where
we can’t see it, and where it is not of much use to us.”
He was so full of sentiment, was Skittles
But his favourite toast, and the one over which he
would become more eloquently lugubrious than over any
other, was always “absent friends.” He appeared to be
singularly rich in “absent friends.” And it must be said
for him that he never forgot them. Whenever and
wherever liquor was to his hand, Skittles’s “absent
friends” were sure of a drink, and his present friends,
unless they displayed great tact and firmness, of a speech
calculated to give them all the blues for a week.
Folks did say at one time that Skittles's eyes usually
turned in the direction of the county jail when he pledged
this toast; but on its being ascertained that Skittles's
kindly remembrance was not intended to be exclusive, but
embraced everybody else’s absent friends as well as his
own, the uncharitable suggestion was withdrawn.
246 A PATHETIC STORY.
Still, we had too much of these “absent friends,”
however comprehensive a body they may have been.
Skittles overdid the business. We all think highly of
our friends when they are absent, more highly, as a
rule, than we do of them when they are not absent.
But we do not want to be always worrying about
them. At a Christmas party, or a complimentary
dinner to somebody, or at a shareholders’ meeting,
where you naturally feel good and sad, they are in
place, but Skittles dragged them in at the most in-
appropriate seasons. Never shall I forget his proposing
their health once at a wedding. It had been a jolly
wedding. Everything had gone off splendidly, and every-
body was in the best of spirits. The breakfast was over,
and quite all the necessary toasts had been drunk. It
was getting near the time for the bride and bridegroom
to depart, and we were just thinking about collecting the
rice and boots with which to finally bless them, when
Skittles rose in his place, with a funereal
expression on his countenance and a
glass of wine in his hand.
I guessed what was coming in a
moment. I tried to kick him under the
table. I do not mean, of course,
that I tried to kick him there
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the attempt to kick him took place under the table.
It failed, however. True, I did kick somebody; but
it evidently could not have been Skittles, for he remained











A PATHETIC STORY., 247
unmoved. In all probability it was the bride, who was
sitting next to him. I did not try again; and he started,
uninterfered with, on his favourite theme.
“Friends,” he commenced, his voice trembling with
emotion, while a tear glistened in his eye, “before we
part—some of us, perhaps, never to meet again on earth—
before this guileless young couple, who have this day
taken upon themselves the manifold trials and troubles of
married life, quit the peaceful fold, as it were, to face the
bitter griefs and disappointments of this weary life, there
is one toast, hitherto undrunk, that I would wish to
propose.”
Here he wiped away the before-mentioned tear, and
the people looked Solemn, and endeavoured to crack nuts
without making a noise.
“Friends,” he went on, growing more and more im-
pressive and dejected in his tones, “there are few of us
here who have not at Some time or other known what it
is to lose, through death or travel, a dear beloved one—
maybe two or three.”
At this point, he stifled a sob; and the bridegroom's
aunt, at the bottom of the table, whose eldest son had
lately left the country at the
expense of his relations, upon
the clear understanding that he
would never again return, began
to cry quietly into the ice-
pudding.
“The fair young maiden at
my side,” continued Skittles,
clearing his throat, and laying
his hand tenderly on the bride's
shoulder, “as you are all aware,

248 A PATHETIC STORY.
was, a few years ago, bereft of her mother. Ladies and
gentlemen, what can be more sad than the death of a
mother P’’ -
This, of course, had the effect of starting the bride off
Sobbing. The bridegroom, meaning well, but, naturally,
under the circumstances, nervous and excited, sought to
console her by murmuring that he felt sure it had all
happened for the best, and that no one who had ever
known the old lady would for a moment wish her back
again; upon which he was indignantly informed by his
newly-made wife that if he was so very pleased at her
mother's death, it was a pity he had not told her so before,
and she would never have married him—and he sank into
thoughtful silence. w
On my looking up, which I had hitherto carefully
abstained from doing, my eyes unfortunately encountered
those of a brother journalist who was sitting at the other
side of the table, and we both burst out laughing, there-
upon gaining a reputation for callousness that I do not
suppose either of us has outlived to this day.
Skittles, the only human being at that once festive
board that did not appear to be wishing he were any-
where else, droned on, with evident satisfaction:
“Friends,” he said, “shall that dear mother be for-
gotten at this joyous gathering 2 Shall the lost mother,
father, brother, sister, child, friend of any of us be
forgotten ? No, ladies and gentlemen l Let us, amid
our merriment, still think of those lost, wandering souls:
let us, amid the wine-cup and the blithesome jest, re-
member—‘Absent Friends.’” º -
The toast was drunk to the accompaniment of Sup-
pressed sobs and low moans, and the wedding guests left
the table to bathe their faces and calm their thoughts.
A PATHETIC STORY. 249
The bride, rejecting the proffered assistance of the groom,
was assisted into the carriage by her father, and departed,
evidently full of misgivings as to her chance of future
happiness in the Society of such a heartless monster as
her husband had just shown himself to be l
Skittles has been an “absent friend’” himself at that
house since then.
But I am not getting on with my pathetic story.
“Do not be late with it,” our editor had said. “Let
me have it by the end of August, certain. I mean to be
early with the Christmas number this time. We didn't
get it out till October last year, you know. I don’t want
the Clipper to be before us again!”
“Oh, that will be all right,” I had answered, airily.
“I shall soon run that off. I’ve nothing much to do this
week. I’ll start it at once.” -
So, as I went home, I cast about in my mind for a
pathetic subject to work on. But not a pathetic idea
could I think of. Comic fancies crowded in upon me,
until my brain began to give way under the strain of
holding them; and, if I had not calmed myself down with
a last week's Punch, I should, in all probability, have gone
off in a fit.
“Oh, I’m evidently not in the humour for pathos,” I
said to myself. “It is no use trying to force it. I’ve
got plenty of time. I will wait till I feel sad.”
But as the days went on, I merely grew more and
more cheerful. By the middle of August, matters were
becoming serious. If I could not, by some means or
other, contrive to get myself into a state of the blues
during the next week or ten days, there would be nothing
in the Christmas number of the Weekly journal to
make the British public wretched, and its repuation as a
250 A PATHETIC STORY.
high-class paper for the family circle would be irretrievably
ruined - -
I was a conscientious young man in those days. I had
undertaken to write a four-and-a-half column pathetic
story by the end of August; and if—no matter at what
mental or physical cost to myself—the task could be
accomplished, those four columns and a half should be
ready.
I have generally found indigestion a good breeder of
sorrowful thoughts. Accordingly, for a couple of days I
lived upon an exclusive diet of hot boiled pork, Yorkshire
pudding, and assorted pastry, with lobster salad for Supper.
It gave me comic nightmare. I dreamed of elephants
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trying to climb trees, and of churchwardens being caught
playing pitch-and-toss on Sundays, and woke up shaking
with laughter - * *
I abandoned the dyspeptic scheme, and took to read-





. A PATHETIC STORY. 25I
ing all the pathetic literature I could collect together.
But it was of no use. The little girl in Wordsworth's
“We are Seven” only irritated me; I wanted to slap her.
Byron's blighted pirates bored me. When, in a novel,
the heroine died, I was glad ; and when the author told
me that the hero never smiled again on earth, I did not
believe it. -
As a last resource, I re-perused one or two of my own
concoctions. They made me feel ashamed of myself, but
not exactly miserable—at least, not miserable in the way
I wanted to be miserable. -
Then I bought all the standard works of wit and
humour that had ever been published, and waded steadily
through the lot. They lowered me a good deal, but not
sufficiently. My cheerfulness seemed proof against
everything.
One Saturday evening I went out and hired a man to
come in and sing sentimental ballads to me. He earned
his money (five shillings). He sang me everything dismal
there was in English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh, together
with a few translations from the German ; and, after the
first hour and a half, I found myself unconsciously trying
to dance to the different tunes. I invented some really
pretty steps for “Auld Robin Grey,” winding up with a
quaint flourish of the left leg at the end of each verse.
At the beginning of the last week, I went to my editor
and laid the case before him.
“Why, what’s the matter with you ?” he said. “You
used to be so good at that sort of thing! Have you
thought of the poor girl who loves the young man that
goes away and never comes back, and she waits and
waits, and never marries, and nobody knows that her
heart is breaking?”
252 A PATHETIC STORY.
“Of course I have l’” I retorted, rather irritably.
“Do you think I don't know the rudiments of my
profession ?”
“Well,” he remarked, “won’t it do P”
“No,” I answered. “With marriage such a failure as
it seems to be all round now-a-days, how can you pump
up sorrow for anyone lucky enough to keep out of it?”
“Um,” he mused, “how about the child that tells
everybody not to cry, and then dies P’’
“Oh, and a good riddance to it !” I replied, peevishly.
“There are too many children in this world. Look what
a noise they make, and what a lot of money they cost in
boots | *
My editor agreed that I did not appear to be in the
proper spirit to write a pathetic child-story.
He inquired if I had thought of the old man who wept
over the faded love-letters on Christmas-eve; and I said
that I had, and that I considered him an old idiot.
“Would a dog story do?” he continued: “something
about a dead dog; that’s always popular.”
“Not Christmassy enough,” I argued.
The betrayed maiden was suggested; but dismissed,
on reflection, as being too broad a subject for the pages
of a “Companion for the Home Circle”—our sub-title.
“Well, think it over for another day,” said my editor.
“I don’t want to have to go to Jenks. He can only be
pathetic as a costermonger, and our lady readers don't
always like the expressions.” -
I thought I would go and ask the advice of a friend of
mine—a very famous and popular author; in fact, one of
the most famous and popular authors of the day. I was
very proud of his friendship, because he was a very great
man indeed : not great, perhaps, in the earnest meaning
A PATHETIC STORY. 253
of the word; not great like the greatest men—the men
who do not know that they are great—but decidedly
great, according to the practical standard. When he
wrote a book, a hundred thousand copies would be sold
during the first week; and when a play of his was pro-
duced, the theatre was crammed for five hundred nights.
And of each new work it was said that it was more clever
and grand and glorious than were even the works he had
written before.
Wherever the English language was spoken, his name
was an honoured household word. Wherever he went, he
was fêted and lionised and cheered. Descriptions of his
charming house, of his charming sayings and doings, of
his charming self, were in every newspaper.
Shakespeare was not one-half so famous in his day as
– is in his.
Fortunately, he happened to be still in town; and on
being ushered into his sumptuously-furnished study, I
found him sitting before one of the windows, smoking an
after-dinner cigar.
He offered me one from the same box. 's cigars
are not to be refused. I know he pays half-a-crown
a-piece for them by the hundred; so I accepted, lit up,
and, sitting down opposite to him, told him my trouble.
He did not answer immediately after I had finished;
and I was just beginning to think that he could not have
been listening, when—with his eyes looking out through
the open window to where, beyond the smoky city, it
seemed as if the Sun, in passing through, had left the
gates of the sky ajar behind him—he took his cigar from
his lips, and said:
“Do you want a real pathetic story 2 I can tell you
one if you do. It is not very long, but it is sad enough,”
254 A PATHETIC STORY,
He spoke in so serious a tone that almost any reply
seemed out of place, and I remained silent.
“It is the story of a man who lost his own self,” he
continued, still looking out upon the dying light, as though
he read the story there, “who stood by the death-bed of
himself, and saw himself slowly die, and knew that he
was dead—for ever.
“Once upon a time there lived a poor boy. He had
little in common with other children. He loved to wander
by himself, to think and
dream all day. It was
not that he was morose,
or did not care for his
comrades, only that some-
thing within kept whis-
pering to his childish
heart that he had deeper
lessons to comprehend
than his schoolmates had.
And an unseen hand
would lead him away
into the solitude where
alone he could learn
their meaning.
“Ever amid the babel
of the swarming street, w
would he hear strong, silent voices, speaking to him as he
walked, telling him of the work that would one day be en-
trusted to his hands,-work for God, such as is given to
only the very few to do, work for the helping of God's
children in the world, for the making of them stronger and
truer and higher;-and, in some dimly-lighted corner,
where for a moment they were alone, he would stand and

A PATHETIC STORY. 255
raise his boyish hands to Heaven, and thank God for this
great promised gift of noble usefulness, and pray that he
might ever prove worthy of the trust; and, in the joy of
his coming work, the little frets of life floated like drift-wood
on a deepening river; and as he grew, the voices spoke to
him ever more plainly, until he saw his work before him
clearly, as a traveller on the hill-top sees the pathway
through the vale. -
“And so the years passed, and he became a man, and
his labour lay ready to his hand.
“And then a foul demon came and tempted him—the
demon that has killed many a better man before, that will
kill many a great man yet—the demon of worldly success.
And the demon whispered evil words into his ear, and,
God forgive him l—he listened.
“‘Of whaf good to you, think you, will it be, your
writing mighty truths and noble thoughts 2 What will
the world pay for them 2 What has ever been the reward
of the earth's greatest teachers and poets—the men who
have given their lives to the best service of mankind—but
neglect and scorn and poverty P Look around ! what are
the wages of the few earnest workers of to-day but a
pauper's pittance, compared with the wealth that is
showered down on those who jig to the tune that the
crowd shouts for 2 Aye, the true singers are honoured
when they are dead—those that are remembered; and the
thoughts from their brains once fallen, whether they them-
selves are remembered or not, stir, with ever-widening
circles to all time, the waters of human life. But of what
use is that to themselves, who starved 2 You have talent,
genius. Riches, luxury, power can be yours—soft beds
and dainty foods. You can be great in the greatness that
the world can see, famous with the fame your own ears
1 7 -
256 A PATHETIC STORY.
will hear. Work for the world, and the world will pay
you promptly; the wages the gods give are long delayed.’
“And the demon prevailed over him, and he fell.
“And, instead of being the servant of God, he became
the slave of men. And he wrote for the multitude what
they wanted to hear, and the multitude applauded and
flung money to him, and as he would stoop to pick it up,
he would grin and touch his cap, and tell them how
generous and noble they were.
“And the spirit of the artist that is handmaiden to
the spirit of the prophet departed from him, and he grew
into the clever huckster, the Smart tradesman, whose only
desire was to discover the public taste that he might
pander to it.
“‘Only tell me what it is you like,” he would cry in
his heart, ‘that I may write it for you, good people ! Will
you have again the old lies P Do you still love the old
dead conventions, the worn-out formulas of life, the
rotting weeds of evil thoughts that keep the fresh air from
the flowers ?
“‘Shall I sing again to you the childish twaddle you
have heard a million times before ? Shall I defend for
you the wrong, and call it right 2 Shall I stab Truth in
the back for you, or praise it
“‘How shall I flatter you to-day, and in what way
to-morrow and the next day ? Only tell me what you
wish me to say, what you wish me to think, that I may
say it and think it, good people, and so get your pence and
your plaudits!'
“Thus he became rich and famous and great; and
had fine clothes to wear and rich foods to eat, as the
demon had promised him, and servants to wait on him,
and horses, and carriages to ride in ; and he would have
A PATHETIC STORY. 257
been happy—as happy as such things can make a man—
only that at the bottom of his desk there lay (and he had
never had the courage to destroy them) a little pile of
faded manuscripts, written in a boyish hand, that would
speak to him of the memory of a poor lad who had once
paced the city's feet-worn stones, dreaming of no other
greatness than that of being one of God's messengers to
men, and who had died, and had been buried for all
eternity, long years ago.”
It was a very sad story, but not exactly the sort of sad
story, I felt, that the public wants in a Christmas number.
So I had to fall back upon the broken-hearted maiden,
after all !
17 &
THE NEW UTOPIA.
THE NEW UTOPIA.
HAD spent an extremely interesting evening. I
had dined with some very “advanced ” friends of
mine at the “National Socialist Club.” We had
had an excellent dinner:
the pheasant, stuffed
with truffles, was a
oem ; and when I ºf ºxº
º that the '49 % 4| ſº º
# & § % #| || § #.
Chateau Lafitte was % §§§
SNNº. É tº."
º sºlº
worth the price we sº-ºº:
had to pay for it,
I do not see what more
I can add in its favour.
After dinner, and
over the cigars (I must say they do know how to stock
good cigars at the National Socialist Club), we had a
very instructive discussion about the coming equality of
man and the nationalisation of capital.
I was not able to take much part in the argument
myself, because, having been left when a boy in a position
which rendered it necessary for me to earn my own living,
I have never enjoyed the time and opportunity to study
these questions.
But I listened very attentively while my friends
explained how, for the thousands of centuries during


262 THE NEW UTOPÍA.
which it had existed before they came, the world had
been going on all wrong, and how, in the course of the next
few years or so, they meant to put it right.
Equality of all mankind was their watchword—perfect
equality in all things—equality in possessions, and equality
in position and influence, and equality in duties, resulting
in equality in happiness and contentment.
The world belonged to all alike, and must be equally
divided. Each man’s labour was the property, not of
himself, but of the State which fed and clothed him, and
must be applied, not to his own aggrandisement, but to
the enrichment of the race.
Individual wealth—the social chain with which the
ſew had bound the many, the bandit’s pistol by which a
small gang of robbers had thieved from the whole com-
munity the fruits of its labours—must be taken from the
hands that too long had held it.
Social distinctions—the barriers by which the rising
tide of humanity had hitherto been fretted and restrained
—must be for ever swept aside. The human race must
press onward to its destiny (whatever that might be), not
as at present, a scattered horde, Scrambling, each man for
himself, over the broken ground of unequal birth and
fortune—the soft sward reserved for the feet of the
pampered, the cruel stones left for the feet of the cursed,—
but an ordered army, marching side by side over the level
plain of equity and equality.
The great bosom of our Mother Earth should nourish
all her children, like and like; none should be hungry,
none should have too much. The strong man should not
grasp more than the weak; the clever should not scheme
to seize more than the simple. The earth was man's, and
the fulness thereof; and among all mankind it should be
THE NEW UTOPIA. 263
portioned out in even shares. All men were equal by
the laws of Nature, and must be made equal by the laws
of man.
With inequality comes misery, crime, sin, selfishness,
arrogance, hypocrisy. In a world in which all men were
equal, there would exist no temptation to evil, and Our
natural nobility would assert itself.
When all men were equal, the world would be Heaven
—freed from the degrading despotism of God.
We raised our glasses and drank to EQUALITY, sacred
EQUALITY; and then ordered the waiter to bring us green
Chartreuse and more cigars.
I went home very thoughtful. I did not go to sleep
for a long while ; I lay awake; thinking over this vision of
a new world that had been presented to me.
How delightful life would be, if only the scheme of my
socialistic friends could be carried out. There would be no
more of this struggling and striving against each other, no
more jealousy, no more disappointment, no more fear of
poverty The State would take charge of us from the
hour we were born until we died, and provide for all our
wants from the cradle to the coffin, both inclusive, and we
should need to give no thought even to the matter. There
would be no more hard work (three hours’ labour a day
would be the limit, according to our calculations, that
the State would require from each adult citizen, and
nobody would be allowed to do more—I should not be
allowed to do more)—no poor to pity, no rich to envy
—no one to look down upon us, no one for us to look
down upon (not quite so pleasant this latter reflection)—
all our life ordered and arranged for us—nothing to think
about except the glorious destiny (whatever that might
be) of Humanity -
264 THE NEW UTOPIA.
Then thought crept away to sport in chaos, and I
slept.
# 3% # >k
When I awoke, I found myself lying under a glass
case, in a high, cheerless room. There was a label over
my head; I turned and read it. It ran as follows:
* fºr
Arrer- º:
• *-
|
4 -# º º W. |
|
i
M
** MAN–ASLEEP.
“PE Rio D–19TH ce NTURY.
“This man was found asleep in a house in London, after the
great social revolution of 1899. From the account given by the
landlady of the house, it would appear that he had already, when
discovered, been asleep for over ten years (she having forgotten to
call him). It was decided, for scientific purposes, not to awake him,
but to just see how long he would sleep on, and he was accordingly
brought and deposited in the ‘Museum of Curiosities,' on February
11th, 1900.”
"Visitors are requested not to squirt water through the air-holes.”
An intelligent-looking old gentleman, who had been
arranging some stuffed lizards in an adjoining case, came
over and took the cover off me.









THE NEW UTOPIA. 265
“What’s the matter?” he asked ; “anything disturbed
you?” -
“No,” I said; “I always wake up like this, when I feel
I’ve had enough sleep. What century is this P’’
“This,” he said, “is the twenty-ninth century. You
have been asleep just one thousand years.”
“Ah! well, I feel all the better for it,” I replied,
getting down off the table. “There’s nothing like
having one’s sleep out.”
“I take it you are going to do the usual thing,” said
the old gentleman to me, as I proceeded to put on Iny
clothes, which had been lying beside me in the case.
“You’ll want me to walk round the city with you, and
explain all the changes to you, while you ask questions
and make silly remarks P’’
“Yes,” I replied, “I suppose that’s what I ought to
do.”
“I suppose so,” he muttered. “Come on, and let's
get it over,” and he led the way from the room.
As we went downstairs, I said:
“Well, is it all right, now 2°
“Is what all right 2" he replied.
“Why, the world,” I answered. “A few friends of
mine were arranging, just before I went to bed, to take it
to pieces and fix it up again properly. Have they got it
all right by this time 2 Is everybody equal now, and sin
and sorrow and all that sort of thing done away with ?”
“Oh, yes,” replied my guide; “you’ll find everything
all right now. We’ve been working away pretty hard at
things while you’ve been asleep. We've just got this
earth about perfect now, I should say. Nobody is allowed
to do anything wrong or silly; and as for equality, tadpoles
ain't in it with us.”
266 TH E NEW UTOPIA.
(He talked in rather a vulgar manner, I thought; but
I did not like to reprove him.)
We walked out into the city. It was very clean and
very quiet. The streets, which were designated by
numbers, ran out from each other at right angles, and all
presented exactly the same appearance. There were no
horses or carriages about ; all the traffic was conducted
by electric cars. All the people that we met wore a quiet,
grave expression, and were so much like each other as to
give one the idea that they were all members of the same
family. Everyone was dressed, as was also my guide, in
a pair of grey trousers, and a grey tunic, buttoning tight
round the neck and fastened round the waist by a belt.
Each man was clean shaven, and each man had black
hair.
I said:
“Are all these men twins P’’ -
“Twins ! Good gracious, no!” answered my guide.
“Whatever made you fancy that ?”
“Why, they all look so much alike,” I replied; “and
they’ve all got black hair l’’
“Oh; that’s the regulation colour for hair,” explained
my companion : “we’ve all got black hair. If a man's
hair is not black naturally, he has to have it dyed black.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why l’’ retorted the old gentleman, somewhat
irritably. “Why, I thought you understood that all men
were now equal. What would become of our equality if
one man or woman were allowed to Swagger about in
golden hair, while another had to put up with carrots :
Men have not only got to be equal in these happy days,
but to look it, as far as can be. By causing all men to
be clean shaven, and all men and women to have black
THE NEW UTOPIA. 267
hair cut the same length, we obviate, to a certain eXtent,
the errors of Nature.”
I said:
“Why black?”
He said he did not know, but that was the colour
which had been decided upon.
“Who by ?” I asked.
“By THE MAJORITY,” he replied, raising his hat and
lowering his eyes, as if in prayer.
We walked further, and passed more men. I said:
“Are there no women in this city ?”
“Women l’exclaimed my guide. “Of course there
are. We’ve passed hundreds of them l’”
“I thought I knew a woman when I saw one,” I
observed; “but I can't remember noticing any.”
“Why, there go two, now,” he said, drawing my atten-
tion to a couple of persons near to
us, both dressed in the regulation
grey trousers and tunics.
“How do you know they are
women P” I asked.
“Why, you see the metal num-
bers that everybody wears on their
collar 2 ”
“Yes: I was just thinking what
a number of policemen you had, and
wondering where the other people
were ! ”
“Well, the even numbers are women; the odd num-
bers are men.”
“How very simple,” I remarked. “I suppose after a
little practice you can tell one sex from the other almost
at a glance 2"

268 THE NEW UTOPIA.
“Oh yes,” he replied, “if you want to.”
We walked on in silence for a while. And then I said:
“Why does everybody have a number 2 ”
“To distinguish him by,” answered my companion.
“Don’t people have names, then 2°
& & NO.”
& 4 Why ? 5 J
“Oh ! there was so much inequality in names. Some
people were called Montmorency, and they looked down
on the Smiths; and the Smythes did not like mixing with
the Joneses: so, to save further bother, it was decided to
abolish names altogether, and to give everybody a number.”
“Did not the Montmorencys and the Smythes
object 2" -
“Yes; but the Smiths and Joneses were in THE
MAJORITY.”
“And did not the Ones and Twos look down upon the
Threes and Fours, and so on 2 ”
“At first, yes. But, with the abolition of wealth,
numbers lost their value, except for industrial purposes
and for double acrostics, and now No. Ioo does not consider
himself in any way superior to No. 1,000,000.”
I had not washed when I got up, there being no con-
veniences for doing so in the Museum, and I was begin-
ning to feel somewhat hot and dirty. I said:
“Can I wash myself anywhere 2 ”
He said:
“No ; we are not allowed to wash ourselves. You
must wait until half-past four, and then you will be
washed for tea.”
“Be washed " I cried. “Who by ?”
“Tlle State.”
He said that they had found they could not maintain
THE NEW UTOPIA, 269
their equality when people were allowed to wash them-
selves. Some people washed three or four times a day,
while others never touched soap and water from one
year's end to the other, and in consequence there got to
be two distinct classes, the Clean and the Dirty. All the
old class prejudices began to be revived. The clean
despised the dirty, and the dirty hated the clean. So, to
end dissension, the State decided to do the washing
itself, and each citizen was now washed twice a day by
government-appointed officials; and private washing was
prohibited.
- I noticed that we passed no houses as we went along,
only block after block of huge, barrack-like buildings, all
of the same size and shape. Occasionally, at a corner, we
came across a smaller building, labelled “Museum,”
“Hospital,” “Debating Hall,” “Bath,” “Gymnasium,”
“Academy of Sciences,” “Exhibition of Industries,”
“School of Talk,” &c., &c.; but never a house.
I said:
“Doesn't anybody live in this town 2 ”
He said: -
“You do ask silly questions; upon my word, you do.
Where do you think they live 2"
I said:
“That’s just what I’ve been trying to think. I don't
See any houses anywhere !”
He said:
“We don't need houses—not houses such as you are
thinking of. We are socialistic now ; we live together in
fraternity and equality. We live in these blocks that you
see. Each block accommodates one thousand citizens.
It contains one thousand beds—one hundred in each room
—and bath-rooms and dressing-rooms in proportion, a
270 THE NEW UTOPIA.
dining-hall and kitchens. At seven o'clock every morning
a bell is rung, and every one rises and tidies up his bed.
At seven-thirty they go into the dressing-rooms, and are
washed and shaved and have their hair done. At eight
o'clock breakfast is served in the dining-hall. It comprises
a pint of oatmeal porridge and half-a-pint of warm milk
for each adult citizen. We are all strict vegetarians now.
The vegetarian vote increased enormously during the last
century, and their organisation being very perfect, they
have been able to dictate every election for the past fifty
years. At one o'clock another bell is rung, and the people
return to dinner, which consists of beans and stewed
fruits, with rolly-polly pudding twice a week, and plum-
duff on Saturdays. At five o’clock there is tea, and at ten
the lights are put out and everybody goes to bed. We
are all equal, and we all live alike—clerk and scavenger,
tinker and apothecary—all together in fraternity and
liberty. The men live in blocks on this side of the town,
and the women are at the other end of the city.”
“Where are the married people kept 2 ” I asked.
“Oh, there are no married couples,” he replied; “we
abolished marriage two hundred years ago. You see,
married life did not work at all well with our system.
Domestic life, we found, was thoroughly anti-socialistic in
its tendencies. Men thought more of their wives and
families than they did of the State. They wished to
labour for the benefit of their little circle of beloved ones
rather than for the good of the community. They cared
more for the future of their children than for the Destiny
of Humanity. The ties of love and blood bound men
together fast in little groups instead of in one great whole.
Before considering the advancement of the human race,
men considered the advancement of their kith and kin.
THE NEW UTOPIA. 271
Before striving for the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, men strove for the happiness of the few who were
near and dear to them. In secret, men and women hoarded
up and laboured and denied themselves, so as, in secret, to
give some little extra gift of joy to their beloved. Love
stirred the vice of ambition in men's hearts. To win the
smiles of the women they loved, to leave a name behind
them that their children might be proud to bear, men
sought to raise themselves above the general level, to do
some deed that should make the world look up to them
and honour them above their fellow-men, to press a
deeper footprint than another's upon the dusty high-
way of the age. The fundamental principles of Socialism
were being daily thwarted and contemned. Each house
was a revolutionary centre for the propagation of indi-
vidualism and personality. From the warmth of each
domestic hearth grew up the vipers, Comradeship and
Independence, to sting the State and poison the minds
of men. -
“The doctrines of equality were openly disputed.
Men, when they loved a woman, thought her superior to
every other woman, and hardly took any pains to disguise
their opinion. Loving wives believed their husbands to
be wiser and braver and better than all other men.
Mothers laughed at the idea of their children being in no
way superior to other children. Children imbibed the
hideous heresy that their father and mother were the best
father and mother in the world.
“From whatever point you looked at it, the Family
stood forth as our foe. One man had a charming wife
and two Sweet-tempered children; his neighbour was
married to a shrew, and was the father of eleven noisy,
ill-dispositioned brats—where was the equality?
13
272 THE NEW UTOPIA.
“Again, wherever the Family existed, there hovered,
ever contending, the angels of Joy and Sorrow ; and in a
world where joy and sorrow are known, Equality cannot
live. One man and woman, in the night, stand weeping
beside a little cot. On the other side of the lath-and-
plaster, a fair young couple, hand in hand, are laughing
at the silly antics of a grave-faced, gurgling baby. What
is poor Equality doing 2 wº
“Such things could not be allowed. Love, we saw,
was our enemy at every turn. He made equality impos-
sible. He brought joy and pain, and peace and suffering
in his train. He disturbed men's beliefs, and imperilled
the Destiny of Humanity; so we abolished him and all
his works. t
“Now there are no marriages, and, therefore, no
domestic troubles; no wooing, therefore, no heartaching;
no loving, therefore no sorrowing; no kisses and no tears.
“We all live together in equality, free from the
troubling of joy or pain.”
I said:
“It must be very peaceful; but, tell me—I ask the
question merely from a scientific standpoint—how do you
keep up the supply of men and women P”
He said:
“Oh, that's simple enough. How did you, in your
day, keep up the supply of horses and cows 2 In the
spring, so many children, according as the State requires,
are arranged for, and carefully bred, under medical super-
vision. When they are born, they are taken away from
their mothers (who, else, might grow to love them), and
brought up in the public nurseries and schools until they
are fourteen. They are then examined by State-appointed
inspectors, who decide what calling they shall be brought
THE NEW UTOPIA. 273
up to, and to such calling they are thereupon apprenticed.
At twenty they take their rank as citizens, and are entitled
to a vote. No difference whatever is made between men
and women. Both sexes enjoy equal privileges.”
I said:
“What are the privileges 2 ”
He said:
“Why, all that I’ve been telling you.”
We wandered on for a few more miles, but passed
nothing but street after street of these huge blocks. I
said: -
“Are there no shops nor stores in this town P’’
“No,” he replied. “What do we want with shops
and stores 2 The State feeds us, clothes us, houses us,
doctors us, washes and dresses us, cuts our corns, and
buries us. What could we do with shops ?”
I began to feel tired with our walk. I said:
“Can we go in anywhere and have a drink?”
He said: -
“A “drink | ' What's a -
‘drink’? We have half-a-pint º | | ||
of cocoa with our dinner. Do Jih.
you mean that ?”
I did not feel equal to ex-
plaining the matter to him, and
he evidently would not have
understood me if I had ; so I
said:
“Yes; I meant that.” .*
We passed a very fine-looking
man a little further on, and I noticed that
he only had one arm. I had noticed two
or three rather big-looking men with only one arm in





18 +
274 THE NEW UTOPIA.
the course of the morning, and it struck me as curious. I
remarked about it to my guide.
He said: -
“Yes; when a man is much above the average size
and strength, we cut one of his legs or arms off, so as to
make things more equal; we lop him down a bit, as it.
were. Nature, you see, is somewhat behind the times;
but we do what we can to put her straight.”
I said:
“I suppose you can't abolish her ?”
“Well, not altogether,” he replied. “We only wish
we could. But,” he added afterwards, with pardonable
pride, “we’ve done a good deal.”
I said:
“How about an exceptionally clever man. What do
you do with him P’’
“Well, we are not much troubled in that way now,”
he answered. “We have not come across anything
dangerous in the shape of brain-power for some very con-
siderable time now. When we do, we perform a surgical
operation upon the head, which softens the brain down to
the average level.”
“I have sometimes thought,” mused the old gentle-
man, “that it was a pity we could not level up some times,
instead of always levelling down; but, of course, that is
impossible.” -
I said:
“Do you think it right of you to cut these people up,
and tone them down, in this manner P’’
He said:
“Of course, it is right.”
“You seem very cock-sure about the matter,” I re-
torted. “Why is it “ of course’ right 2 °
THE NEW UTOPIA. 275
“Because it is done by THE MAJORITY.”
“How does that make it right?” I asked.
“A MAJORITY can do no wrong,” he answered.
“Oh I is that what the people who are lopped
think 2 ”
“They !” he replied, evidently astonished at the
question. “Oh, they are in the minority, you know.”
“Yes; but even the minority has a right to its arms
and legs and heads, hasn't it?”
“A minority has NO rights,” he answered.
. I said: -
“It’s just as well to belong to the Majority, if you're
thinking of living here, isn't it 7”
He said:
“Yes; most of our people do. They seem to think it
more convenient.” -
I was finding the town somewhat uninteresting, and
I asked if we could not go out into the country for a
change.
My guide said:
“Oh, yes, certainly;” but did not think I should care
much for it.
“Oh but it used to be so beautiful in the country,” I
urged, “before I went to bed. There were great green
trees, and grassy, wind-waved meadows, and little rose-
decked cottages, and 9 3
“Oh, we’ve changed all that,” interrupted the old
gentleman; “it is all one huge market-garden now,
divided by roads and canals cut at right angles to each
other. There is no beauty in the country now whatever.
We have abolished beauty; it interfered with our equality.
It was not fair that some people should live among lovely
scenery, and others upon barren moors. So we have
276 THE NEW UTOPIA.
made it all pretty much alike everywhere now, and no
place can lord it over another.”
“Can a man emigrate into any other country 2" I
asked ; “it doesn't matter what country—any other
country would do.”
“Oh, yes, if he likes,” replied my companion; “but
why should he 7 All lands are exactly the same. The
whole world is all one people now—one language, one
law, one life.” -
“Is there no variety, no change anywhere 2 " I asked.
“What do you do for pleasure, for recreation? Are there
any theatres 2 ”
“No,” responded my guide. “We had to abolish
theatres. The histrionic temperament seemed utterly
unable to accept the principles of equality. Each actor
thought himself the best actor in the world, and superior,
in fact, to most other people altogether. I don’t know
whether it was the same in your day ?”
“Exactly the same,” I answered, “but we did not
take any notice of it.”
“Ah! we did,” he replied, “and, in consequence, shut
the theatres up. Besides, our White Ribbon Vigilance
Society said that all places of amusement were vicious
and degrading; and being an energetic and stout-winded
band, they soon won THE MAJORITY over to their
views; and so all amusements are prohibited now.”
I said: “Are you allowed to read books?”
“Well,” he answered, “there are not many written.
You see, owing to our all living such perfect lives, and
there being no wrong, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or love,
or grief in the world, and everything being so regular and
so proper, there is really nothing much to write about—
except, of course, the Destiny of Humanity.”
THE NEW UTOPIA. 277
“True !” I said, “I see that. But what of the old
works, the classics 2 You had Shakespeare, and Scott,
and Thackeray, and there were one or two little things of
my own that were, not half-bad. What have you done
with all those 2 ” - -
“Oh, we have burned all those old works,” he said.
“They were full of the old, wrong notions of the old,
wrong, wicked times, when men were merely slaves and
beasts of burden.”
He said all the old paintings and sculptures had been
likewise destroyed, partly for that same reason, and partly
because they were considered improper by the White
Ribbon Vigilance Society, which was a great power now ;
while all new art and literature were forbidden, as such
things tended to undermine the principles of equality.
They made men think, and the men that thought grew
cleverer than those that did not want to think; and those
that did not want to think naturally objected to this, and
being in THE MAJORITY, objected to some purpose.
He said that, from like considerations, there were no
sports or games permitted. Sports and games caused
competition, and competition led to inequality. -
I said:
“How long do your citizens work each day ?”
“Three hours,” he answered; “after that, all the
remainder of the day belongs to ourselves.”
“Ah! that is just what I was coming to,” I remarked.
“Now, what do you do with yourselves during those other
twenty-one hours ?”
“Oh, we rest.”
“What! for the whole twenty-one hours?
“Well, rest and think and talk.”
“What do you think and talk about 7”
278 THE NEW UTOPIA,
“Oh! Oh, about how wretched life must have been
in the old times, and about how happy we are now, and
—and—oh, and the Destiny of Humanity l’”
“Don’t you ever get sick of the Destiny of Humanity?”
“No, not much.”
“And what do you understand by it? What is the
Destiny of Humanity, do you think?”
“Oh l—why to—to go on being like we are now, only
more so—everybody more equal, and more things done by
electricity, and everybody to have two votes instead of
one, and 9 3
“Thank you. That will do. Is there anything else that
you think off Have you got a religion ?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you worship a God 2"
“Oh, yes.”
“What do you call him 2 ”
“THE MAJORITY.”
“One question more— You don't mind my asking
you all these questions, by-the-by, do you ?”
“Oh, no. This is all part of my three hours’ labour
for the State.”
“Oh, I’m glad of that. I should not like to feel that
I was encroaching on your time for rest; but what I
wanted to ask was, do many of the people here commit
suicide 2 ”
“No ; such a thing never occurs to them.”
I looked at the faces of the men and women that were
passing. There was a patient, almost pathetic, expres-
sion upon them all. I wondered where I had seen that
look before; it seemed familiar to me.
All at once I remembered. It was just the quiet,
troubled, wondering expression that I had always noticed
THE NEW UTOPIA. 279
upon the faces of the horses and oxen that we used to
breed and keep in the old world.
No. These people would not think of suicide.
Strangel how very dim and indistinct all the faces are
growing around me ! And where is my guide? and why am
I sitting on the pavement 2 and—hark | surely that is the
voice of Mrs. Biggles, my old landlady.
Has she been asleep a thousand years,
too 2 She says it is twelve o'clock—
only twelve 2 and I’m not to be washed
till half-past four ; and I do feel
so stuffy and hot, and my head
is aching. Hulloa l why, I'm
in bed | Has it all been a
dream 2 And am I back in the
nineteenth century 2
Through the open window I
hear the rush and roar of old
life's battle. Men are fighting,
striving, working, carving out each man his own life
with the sword of strength and will. Men are laughing,
grieving, loving, doing wrong deeds, doing great deeds,-
falling, struggling, helping one another—living !
And I have a good deal more than three hours' work
to do to-day, and I meant to be up at seven ; and, oh
dear! I do wish I had not smoked so many strong cigars
last night l




DREAMS.
DREAMS.
H E most extraordinary dream I ever had was
| One in which I fancied that, as I was going into
a theatre, the cloak-room attendant stopped me
in the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me.
I was not surprised; indeed,
my acquaintanceship with
theatre harpies would prevent
my feeling any surprise at such
a demand, even in my waking
moments; but I was, I must
honestly confess, considerably
annoyed. It was not the pay-
ment of the cloak-room fee
that I so much minded, - I
offered to give that to the man
then and there. It was the
parting with my legs that I
objected to.
I said I had never heard
of a such rule being attempted to be put in force at
any respectable theatre before, and that I considered it
a most absurd and vexatious regulation. I also said I
should write to The Times about it.
The man replied that he was very sorry, but that those
were his instructions. People complained that they could
not get to and from their seats comfortably, because other
people's legs were always in the way; and it had, there-

284 DREAMS.
fore, been decided that, in future, everybody should leave
their legs outside.
It seemed to me that the management, in making this
order, had clearly gone beyond their legal right; and,
under ordinary circumstances I should have disputed it.
Being present, however, more in the character of a guest
than in that of a patron, I hardly liked to make a disturb-
ance; and so I sat down and meekly prepared to comply
with the demand.
I had never before known that the human leg did
unscrew. I had always thought it was a fixture. But the
man showed me how to undo them, and I found that
they came off quite easily.
The discovery did not surprise me any more than the
original request that I should take them off had done.
Nothing does surprise one in a dream.
I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I
was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My
relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me
“Good-bye!” They all came, and were all very pleasant;
but they were not in the least astonished—not one of
them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy
as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the
world.
They bore the calamity, besides, with an amount of
stoicism that would have done credit to a Spartan father.
There was no fuss, no scene. On the contrary, an atmo-
sphere of mild cheerfulness prevailed.
Yet they were very kind. Somebody—an uncle, I
think—left me a packet of sandwiches and a little some-
thing in a flask, in case, as he said, I should feel peckish
on the scaffold.
It is “those twin-gaolers of the daring” thought,
DREAMS, 285
Knowledge and Experience, that teach us surprise... We
are surprised and incredulous when, in novels and plays,
we come across good men and women, because Knowledge
and Experience have taught us how rare and problematical
is the existence of such people. In waking life, my friends
and relations would, of course, have been surprised at
hearing that I had committed a murder, and was, in con-
sequence, about to be hanged, because Knowledge and
Experience would have taught them that, in a country
where the law is powerful and the police alert, the
Christian citizen is usually pretty successful in withstand-
ing the voice of temptation, prompting him to commit
crime of an illegal character.
But into Dreamland, Knowledge and Experience do
not enter. They stay without, together with the dull, dead
clay of which they form a part; while the freed brain,
released from their narrowing tutelage, steals softly past
the ebon gate, to wanton at its own sweet will among
the mazy paths that wind through the garden of Per-
sephone. -
Nothing that it meets with in that eternal land
astonishes it, because, unfettered by the dense conviction
of our waking mind, that nought outside the ken of our own
vision can in this universe be, all things to it are possible
and even probable. In dreams, we fly and wonder not:
except that we never flew before. We go naked, yet are
not ashamed, though we mildly wonder what the police
are about that they do not stop us. We converse with
our dead, and think it was unkind that they did not come
back to us before. In dreams, there happens that which
human language cannot tell. In dreams, we see “the
light that never was on Sea or land,” we hear the sounds
that never yet were heard by waking ears.
286 DREAMS.
It is only in sleep that true imagination ever stirs
within us. Awake, we never imagine anything; we merely
alter, vary, or transpose. We give another twist to the
kaleidoscope of the things we see around us, and obtain
another pattern; but not one of us has ever added one
tiniest piece of new glass to the toy.
A Dean Swift sees one race of people smaller, and
another race of people larger, than the race of people that
live down his own street. And he also sees a land where
the horses take the place of men, and men take the place
of horses. A Bulwer Lytton lays the scene of one of his
novels inside the earth instead of outside. A Rider Hag-
gard introduces us to a lady whose age is a few years more
than the average woman would care to confess to ; and
pictures crabs larger than the usual shilling or eighteen-
penny size. The number of so-called imaginative writers
who visit the moon is legion, and for all the novelty that
they find, when they get there, they might just as well
have gone to Putney. Others are continually drawing for
us visions of the world one hundred or one thousand years
hence. There is always a depressing absence of human
nature about the place ; so much so, that one feels great
consolation in the thought, while reading, that we our-
selves shall be comfortably dead and buried before the
picture can be realised. In these prophesied Utopias
everybody is painfully good and clean and happy, and
all the work is done by electricity.
There is somewhat too much electricity, for my taste,
in these worlds to come. One is reminded of those pic-
torial enamel-paint advertisements that one sees about so
often now, in which all the members of an extensive
household are represented as gathered together in one
room, spreading enamel-paint over everything they can
DREAMS, 287.
lay their hands upon. The old man is on a step-ladder,
daubing the walls and ceiling with “cuckoo's-egg green,”
while the parlourmaid and the cook are on their knees,
painting the floor with “sealing-wax red.” The old lady
is doing the picture-frames in “terra cotta.” The eldest
daughter and her young man are making sly love in a
corner over a pot of “high-art yellow,” with which, so
soon as they have finished wasting their time, they will,
it is manifest, proceed to elevate the piano. Younger
brothers and sisters are busy freshening up the chairs
and tables with “strawberry-jam pink” and “jubilee
magenta.” Every blessed thing in that room is being
coated with enamel paint, from the sofa to the fireirons,
from the sideboard to the eight-day clock. If there is
any paint left over, it will be used up for the family
bible and the canary.
It is claimed for this invention that a little child can
make as much mess with it as can a grown-up person, and
so all the children of the family are represented in the
picture as hard at work, enamelling whatever few articles
of furniture and household use the grasping selfishness of
their elders has spared to them. One is painting the
toasting fork a “skim-milk blue,” while another is giving
aesthetical value to the Dutch oven by means of a new shade
of art green. The bootjack is being renovated in “old gold,”
and the baby is sitting on the floor, Smothering its own
cradle with “flush-upon-a-maiden's-cheek peach colour.”
One feels that the thing is being overdone. That
family, before another month is gone, will be among the
strongest opponents of enamel paint that the century has
produced. Enamel paint will be the ruin of that once
happy home. Enamel paint has a cold, glassy, cynical
appearance. Its presence everywhere about the place will
19
288 DREAMS,
begin to irritate the old man in the course of a week or so.
He will call it, “This damn'd sticky stuff!” and will tell
the wife that he wonders she didn't paint herself and the
children with it while she was about it. She will reply,
in an exasperatingly quiet tone of voice, that she does like
that Perhaps he will say next, that she did not warn
him against it, and tell him what an idiot he was making
of himself, spoiling the whole house with his foolish fads.
Each one will persist that it was the other one who first
suggested the absurdity, and they will sit up in bed and
quarrel about it every night for a month. • .
The children, having acquired a taste for smudging the
concoction about, and there being nothing else left un-
touched in the house, will try to enamel the cat; and then
there will be bloodshed, and broken windows, and spoiled
infants, and Sorrows and yells. The smell of the paint
will make everybody ill; and the servants will give notice.
Tradesmen’s boys will lean up against places that are not
dry and get their clothes enamelled, and claim compensa-
tion. And the baby will suck the paint off its cradle and
have fits.
But the person that will suffer most will, of course, be
the eldest daughter's young man. The eldest daughter's
young man is always unfortunate. He means well, and he
tries hard. His great ambition is to make the family love
him. But Fate is ever against him, and he only succeeds
in gaining their undisguised contempt. The fact of his
being “gone’’ on their Emily is, of itself, naturally suffi-
cient to stamp him as an imbecile in the eyes of Emily's
brothers and sisters. The father finds him slow, and
thinks the girl might have done better; while the best
that his future mother-in-law (his sole supporter) can Say
for him is, that he seems steady.
DREAMS. 289
There is only one thing that prompts the family to
tolerate him, and that is the reflection that he is going
to take Emily away from them.
On that understanding =– ſº !
they put up with him. | º
The eldest daughter's || @ | #.
young man, in this par- \} A - § & j
ticular case, will, you may M| º §§ | i
ºp.º.º iſºg §
that exact moment when º §§ § ºl
the baby's life is hovering lº \% #; &
in the balance, and the .3- : ń ś
cook is waiting for her § º % &/}| :
wages with her box in the |É º { } || i
hall, and a coal-heaver is |; *—jº & i
at the front door with a § § tº e
policeman, making a row ºº::==
2 : , * , 2’
about the damage to his
trousers, to come in, Smiling, with a specimen pot of some
new high art, Squashed-tomato-shade enamel paint, and
}%
2
%
* *===
|
E.
Suggest that they should
try it on the old man's
pipe.
Then Emily will go off
into hysterics, and Emily's
male progenitor will firmly
but quietly lead that ill-
; starred yet true-hearted
º young man to the public
gº side of the garden-gate;
w º {% and the engagement will
º \ De ‘‘ Off.”
Too much of anything








19 %
290 DREAMS.
is a mistake, as the man said when his wife presented
him with four new healthy children in one day. We
should practise moderation in all matters. A little
enamel paint would have been good. They might have
enamelled the house inside and out, and have left the
furniture alone. Or they might have coloured the furni-
ture, and let the house be. But an entirely and com-
pletely enamelled home—a home, such as enamel-paint
manufacturers love to picture on their advertisements,
over which the yearning eye wanders in vain, seeking
One single square inch of unenamelled matter — is, I
am convinced, a mistake. It may be a home that, as
the testimonials assure us, will easily wash. It may
be an “artistic” home; but the average man is not yet
educated up to the appreciation of it. The average
man does not care for high art. At a certain point, the
average man gets sick of high art.
So, in these coming Utopias, in which our unhappy
grandchildren will have to drag out their colourless exist-
ence, there will be too much electricity. They will grow
to loathe electricity. -
Electricity is going to light them, warm them, carry
them, doctor them, cook for them, execute them, if neces-
sary. They are going to be weaned on electricity, rocked
in their cradles by electricity, slapped by electricity, ruled
and regulated and guided by electricity, buried by elec-
tricity. I may be wrong, but I rather think they are
going to be hatched by electricity.
In the new world of our progressionist teachers, it is
electricity that is the real motive-power. The men and
women are only marionettes—worked by electricity.
But it was not to speak of the electricity in them, but
of the originality in them, that I referred to these works
DREAMS. 291
of fiction. There is no originality in them whatever.
Human thought is incapable of Originality. No man ever
yet imagined a new thing—only some variation or exten
sion of an old thing. -
The sailor, when he was asked what he would do with
a fortune, promptly replied: -
“Buy all the rum and 'baccy there is in the world.”
“And what after that ?” they asked him.
“ Eh 2 °
“What would you buy after that—after you had
bought up all the rum and tobacco there was in the
world 2—what would you buy then P”
“After that ? Oh 'um !” (a long pause). “Oh ”
(with inspiration) “why, more 'baccy ”
Rum and tobacco he knew something of, and could
therefore imagine about. He did not know any other
luxuries, therefore he could not conceive of any others.
So if you asked one of these Utopian-dreaming gentry
what, after they had secured for their world all the elec-
tricity there was in the Universe, and after every mortal
thing in their ideal Paradise was done and said and
thought by electricity, they could imagine as further
necessary to human happiness, they would probably
muse for a while, and then reply “More electricity.”
They know electricity. They have seen the electric
light, and heard of electric boats and omnibuses. They
have possibly had an electric shock at a railway station
for a penny.
Therefore, knowing that electricity does three things,
they can go on and “imagine" electricity doing three
hundred things, and the very great ones among them
can imagine it doing three thousand things; but for
them, or anybody else, to imagine a new force, totally
292 DREAMS.
unconnected with and different from anything yet known
in nature, would be utterly impossible. -
Human thought is not a firework, ever shooting
off fresh forms and shapes as it burns : it is a tree,
growing very slowly—you can watch it long and see no
movement—very silently, unnoticed. It was planted in
the world many thousand years ago, a tiny, sickly plant.
And men guarded it and tended it, and gave up life and
fame to aid its growth. In the hot days of their youth,
they came to the gate of the garden and knocked, beg-
ging to be let in, and to be counted among the gardeners.
And their young companions without called to them to
come back, and play the man with bow and spear, and
win sweet smiles from rosy lips, and take their part amid
the feast, and dance, not stoop with wrinkled brows, at
weaklings' work. And the passers-by mocked them and
called shame, and others cried out to stone them. And
still they stayed there labouring, that the tree might grow
a little, and they died and were forgotten.
And the tree grew fair and strong. The storms of
ignorance passed over it, and harmed it not. The fierce
fires of superstition soared around it ; but men leapt into
the flames and beat them back, perishing, and the tree
grew. f
With the sweat of their brow have men nourished its
green leaves. Their tears have moistened the earth about
it. With their blood they have watered its roots.
The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has
grown and flourished. And its branches have spread far
and high, and ever fresh shoots are bursting forth, and
ever new leaves unfolding to the light. But they are all
part of the one tree—the tree that was planted on
the first birthday of the human race. The stem that
DREAMS. 293
bears them springs from the gnarled old trunk that was
green and soft when white-haired Time was a little
child; the sap that feeds them is drawn up through the
roots that twine and twist about the bones of the ages
that are dead.
The human mind can no more produce an original
thought than a tree can bear an original fruit. As well
might one cry for an original note in music as expect an
original idea from a human brain.
One wishes our friends, the critics, would grasp this
simple truth, and leave off clamouring for the impossible,
and being shocked because they do not get it. When
a new book is written, the high-class critic opens it with
feelings of faint hope, tempered by strong conviction of
coming disappointment. As he pores over the pages, his
brow darkens with virtuous indignation, and his lip curls
with the God-like contempt that the exceptionally great
critic ever feels for everybody in this world, who is not
yet dead. Buoyed up by a touching, but totally fallacious,
belief that he is performing a public duty, and that the
rest of the community is waiting in breathless suspense
to learn his opinion of the work in question, before forming
any judgment concerning it themselves, he, nevertheless,
wearily struggles through about a third of it. Then his
long-suffering soul revolts, and he flings it aside with a
cry of despair.
“Why, there is no originality whatever in this,” he
says. “This book is taken bodily from the Old Testa-
ment. It is the story of Adam and Eve all over again.
The hero is a mere man with two arms, two legs, and
a head (So called). Why, it is only Moses's Adam under
another name ! And the heroine is nothing but a woman
and she is described as beautiful, and as having long hair.
294 DREAMS.
The author may call her ‘Angelina,’ or any other name
he chooses; but he has evidently, whether he acknowledges
it or not, copied her direct from Eve. The characters are
barefaced plagiarisms from the book of Genesis Oh!
to find an author with originality l’’
One spring I went a walking tour in the country.
It was a glorious spring. Not the sort of spring they
give us in these miserable times, under this shameless
government—a mixture of East wind, blizzard, snow,
rain, slush, fog, frost, hail, sleet, and thunder-storms—
but a sunny, blue-sky'd, joyous spring, such as we used
to have regularly every year when I was a young man,
and things were different.
It was an exceptionally beautiful spring, even for those
golden days; and, as I wandered through the waking
land, and saw the dawning of the coming green, and
watched the blush upon the hawthorn hedge, deepening
each day beneath the kisses of the sun, and looked up
at the proud old mother trees, dandling their myriad
baby buds upon their strong fond arms, holding them
high for the soft West wind to caress as he passed laugh-
ing by, and marked the primrose yellow creep across the
carpet of the woods, and saw the new flush of the fields,
and saw the new light on the hills, and heard the new-
found gladness of the birds, and heard from copse and
farm and meadow, the timid callings of the little new-born
things, wondering to find themselves alive, and smelt
the freshness of the earth, and felt the promise in the air,
and felt a strong hand in the wind, my spirit rose within
me. Spring had come to me also, and stirred me with
a strange new life, with a strange new hope. I, too,
was part of Nature, and it was Spring ! Tender leaves
and blossoms were unfolding from my heart. Bright
DREAMS. 295
flowers of love and gratitude were opening round its
roots. I felt new strength in all my limbs. New blood
was pulsing through my veins. Nobler thoughts and
nobler longings were throbbing through my brain.
As I walked, Nature came and talked beside me, and
showed me the world and myself, and the ways of God
seemed clearer.
It seemed to me a pity that all the beautiful and
precious thoughts and ideas that were crowding in upon
me should be lost to my fellow-men, and so I pitched
my tent at a little cottage, and set to work to write them
down then and there as they came to me.
“It has been complained of me,” I said to myself
“that I do not write literary and high-class work—at
least, not work that is exceptionally literary and high-
class. This reproach shall be removed. I will write an
article that shall be a classic. I have worked for the
ordinary, every-day reader. It is right that I should do
something now to improve the literature of my beloved
country.”
And I wrote a grand essay—though I say it who should
not, though I don’t see why I shouldn't—all about Spring,
and the way it made you feel, and what it made you think.
It was simply crowded with elevated thoughts and high-
class ideas and cultured wit, was that essay. There was
only one fault about that essay: it was too brilliant.
It wanted commonplace relief. It would have exhausted
the average reader: so much cleverness would have
wearied him. -
I wish I could remember some of the beautiful things
in that essay, and here set them down; because then you
would be able to see what they were like for yourselves,
and that would be so much simpler than my explaining to
296 DREAMS.
you how beautiful they were. Unfortunately, however, I
cannot now call to mind any of them.
I was very proud of this essay, and when I got back
to town I called on a very superior friend of mine, a
critic, and read it to him. I do not care for him to see
any of my usual work, because he really is a very superior
person indeed, and the perusal of it appears to give him
pains inside. But this article, I thought, would do him
good.
“What do you think of it 7” I asked, when I had
finished. -
“Splendid,” he replied, “excellently arranged. I
never knew you were so well acquainted with the works
of the old writers. Why, there is scarcely a classic of
any note that you have not quoted from. But where—
where,” he added, musing, “ did you get that last idea
but two from ? It’s the only one I don’t seem to
remember. It isn't a bit of your own, is it f"
‘F--- | ſy sº, f t | –
frº-Hº-



DREAMS. 297
He said that, if so, he should advise me to leave it
out. Not that it was altogether bad, but that the inter-
polation of a modern thought among so unique a collec-
tion of passages from the ancients seemed to spoil the
scheme.
And he enum e ºated the various dead - and - buried
gentlemen from who nhe appeared to think I had collated
my article.
“But,” I replied, when I had recovered my astonish-
ment sufficiently to speak, “it isn’t a collection at all. It
is all original. I wrote the thoughts down as they came
to me. I have never read any of these people you
mention, except Shakespeare.”
Of course Shakespeare was bound to be among them.
I am getting to dislike that man so. He is always being
held up before us young authors as a model, and I do hate
models. There was a model boy at our school, I remem-
ber, Henry Summers; and it was just the same there. It
was continually, “Look at Henry Summers he doesn’t
put the preposition before the verb, and spell business
b-i-z l’’ or, “Why can't you write like Henry Summers ?
He doesn't get the ink all over the copy-book and half-way
up his back l’” We got tired of this everlasting “Look
at Henry Summers l’’ after a while, and so, one after-
noon, on the way home, a few of us lured Henry Summers
up a dark court; and when he came out again he was
not worth looking at. -
Now it is perpetually, “Look at Shakespeare!” “Why
don't you write like Shakespeare P’’ “Shakespeare never
made that joke. Why don't you joke like Shakespeare 2"
If you are in the play-writing line it is still worse for
you. “Why don't you write plays like Shakespeare's P’’
they indignantly say. “Shakespeare never made his
298 DREAMS.
comic man a penny steamboat captain.” “Shakespeare
never made his hero address the girl as ‘ducky.’ Why
don't you copy Shakespeare P’” If you do try to copy
Shakespeare, they tell you that you must be a fool to
attempt to imitate Shakespeare.
Oh, shouldn’t I like to get Shakespeare up our street,
and punch him
“I cannot help that,” replied my critical friend---to
return to our previous question—“the germ of every
thought and idea you have got in that article can be
traced back to the writers I have named. If you doubt
it, I will get down the books, and show you the passages
for yourself.”
But I declined the offer. I said I would take his word
for it, and would rather not see the passages referred to.
I felt indignant. “If,” as I said, “these men—these
Platos and Socrateses and Ciceros and Sophocleses and
Aristophaneses and Aristotles and the rest of them had
been taking advantage of my absence to go about the
world spoiling my business for me, I would rather not
hear any more about them.”
And I put on my hat and came out, and I have never
tried to write anything original since.
I dreamed a dream once. (It is the sort of thing a
man would dream. You cannot very well dream anything
else, I know. But the phrase sounds poetical and
biblical, and so I use it.) I dreamt that I was in a
strange country—indeed, one might say an extraordinary
country. It was ruled entirely by critics. -
The people in this strange land had a very high
opinion of critics—nearly as high an opinion of critics as
1he critics themselves had, but not, of course, quite, that
not being practicable—and they had agreed to be guided
DREAMS. - 299
in all things by the critics. I stayed some years in that
land. But it was not a cheerful place to live in, so I
dreamt. -
There were authors in this country, at first, and they
wrote books. But the critics could find nothing original
in the books whatever, and said it was a pity that men,
who might be usefully employed hoeing potatoes, should
waste their time and the time of the critics, which was of
still more importance, in stringing together a collection of
platitudes, familiar to every school-boy, and dishing up
old plots and stories that had already been cooked and
recooked for the public until everybody had been surfeited
with them.
And the writers read what the critics said, and sighed,
and gave up writing books, and went off and hoed
potatoes, as advised. They had had no experience in
hoeing potatoes, and they hoed very badly; and the
people whose potatoes they hoed strongly recommended
them to leave hoeing potatoes, and to go back and write
books. But you can’t do what everybody advises.
There were artists also in this strange world, at first,
and they painted pictures, which the critics came and
looked at through eyeglasses. -
“Nothing whatever original in them,” said the critics;
“same old colours, same old perspective and form, same
old sunset, same old Sea and land and sky and figures.
Why do these poor men waste their time, painting pictures,
when they might be so much more satisfactorily employed
on ladders, painting houses P’’
Nothing, by-the-by, you may have noticed, troubles
your critic more than the idea that the artist is wasting
his time. It is the waste of time that vexes the critic: he
has such an exalted idea of the value of other people's
300 DREAMS.
time. “Dear, dear me !” he says to himself, “why, in
the time the man must have taken to paint this picture or
to write this book, he might have blacked fifteen thousand
pairs of boots, or have carried fifteen thousand hods of
mortar up a ladder. This is how the time of the world
is lost l” -
It never occurs to him that, but for that picture or
book, the artist would, in all probability, have been
mouching about with a pipe in his mouth, getting into
trouble.
It reminds me of the way people used to talk to me
when I was a boy. I would be sitting, as good as gold,
reading The Pirate's Lair, when some cultured relative
would look over my shoulder and say: “Bahl what are
you wasting your time with that rubbish for 2 Why don’t
you go and do something useful ?” and would take the
book away from me. Upon which I would get up, and
go out to “do something useful; ” and would come home
an hour afterwards, looking like a bit out of a battle
picture, having tumbled through the roof of Farmer
Bates's greenhouse and killed a cactus, though totally
unable to explain how I came to be on the roof of Farmer
Bates's greenhouse. They had much better have left me
alone, lost in The Pirate's Lair /
The artists in this land of which I dreamt left off
painting pictures, after hearing what the critics said,
and purchased ladders, and went off and painted
houses.
Because, you see, this country of which I dreamt
was not one of those vulgar, ordinary countries, such as
exist in the waking world, where people let the critics
talk as much as ever they like, and nobody pays the
slightest attention to what they say. Here, in this strange
DREAMS. 301
land, the critics were taken seriously, and their advice
followed.
As for the poets and sculptors, they were very soon
shut up. The idea of any educated person wanting to
read modern poetry when he could obtain Homer, or
caring to look at any other statue while there was still
some of the Venus de Medicis left, was too absurd. Poets
and sculptors were only wasting their time.
What new occupation they were recommended to
adopt, I forget. Some calling they knew nothing what-
ever about, and that they were totally unfitted for, of
COUITS62. -
The musicians tried their art for a little while, but
they, too, were of no use. “Merely a repetition of the
same notes in different combinations,” said the critics.
“Why will people waste their time writing unoriginal
music, when they might be sweeping crossings P’’
One man had written a play. I asked what the critics
had said about him. They showed me his tomb.
Then, there being no more artists or literateurs or
dramatists or musicians left for their beloved critics to
criticise, the general public of this enlightened land said
to themselves, “Why should not our critics come and
criticise us P Criticism is useful to a man. Have we
not often been told so 2 Look how useful it has been
to the artists and writers—saved the poor fellows from
wasting their time ! Why shouldn’t we have some of its
benefits P’’
They suggested the idea to the critics, and the critics
thought it an excellent one, and said they would under-
take the job with pleasure. One must say for the critics
that they never shirk work. They will sit and criticise
for eighteen hours a day, if necessary, or even if quite
3O2 DREAMS. */
unnecessary, for the matter of that. You can't give them
too much to criticise. They will criticise everything and
everybody in this world. They will criticise everything in
the next world, too, when they get there. I expect poor
old Pluto has a lively time with them all, as it is.
So, when a man built a house, or a farm-yard hen laid
an egg, the critics were asked in to comment on it. They
found that none of the houses were original. On every
floor were passages that seemed mere copies from pas-
sages in other houses. They were all built on the same
hackneyed plan: cellars underneath, ground floor level
with the street, attic at the
Łº. 22 top. No originality any-
§§ §§§ 2. where !
ſº." [… ºš d Z-7, g º e
& ty)}} % 2%. , So, likewise, with the
eggs. Every egg sug-
gested reminiscences of
other eggs.
It was heartrending
work.
The critics criticised
all things. When a
young couple fell in
love, they each, before thinking of marriage, called upon
the critics for a criticism of the other one.
Needless to say that, in the result, no marriage ever
came of it.
“My dear young lady,” the critics would say, after the
inspection had taken place, “I can discover nothing new
whatever about the young man. You would simply be
wasting your time in marrying him.”
Or, to the young man it would be:
“Oh dear, no l Nothing attractive about the girl at

DREAMS. 303
all. Who on earth gave you that notion ? Simply a lovely
face and figure, angelic disposition, beautiful mind,
Staunch heart, noble character. Why, there must have
been nearly a dozen such girls born into the world since
its creation. You would be only wasting your time
loving her.” -
They criticised the birds for their hackneyed style of
singing, and the flowers for their hackneyed scents and
colours. They complained of the weather that it lacked
Originality—(true, they had not lived out an English
spring)—and found fault with the Sun because of the
Sameness of his methods.
They criticised the babies. When a fresh infant was
published in a house, the critics would call in a body to
pass their judgment upon it, and the young mother would
bring it down for them to sample.
“Did you ever see a child anything like that in this
world before ?” she would say, holding it out to them.
“Isn't it a wonderful baby ? You never saw a child with
legs like that, I know. Nurse says he's the most extra-
Ordinary baby she ever attended. Bless him l’”
But the critics did not think anything of it.
“Tut, tut,” they would reply, “there is nothing extra-
ordinary about that child—no originality whatever. Why,
it’s exactly like every other baby—bald head, red face, big
mouth, and stumpy nose. Why, that’s only a weak
imitation of the baby next door. It’s a plagiarism, that's
what that child is. You've been wasting your time,
madam. If you can't do anything more original than
that, we should advise you to give up the business
altogether.”
That was the end of criticism in that strange land.
“Oh look here, we’ve had enough of you and your
20
304 DREAMS.
originality,” said the people to the critics, after that.
“Why, you are not original, when one comes to think of
it, and your criticisms are not original. You've all of you
been saying exactly the same thing ever since the time of
Solomon. We are going to drown you and have a little
peace.”
“What, drown a critic l’’ cried the critics, “never
heard of such a monstrous proceeding in Our lives | "
“No, we flatter ourselves it is an original idea,” replied
the public, brutally. “You ought to be charmed with it.
Out you come - -
So they took the critics out and drowned them, and
then passed a short act, making criticism a capital
offence. -
After that, the art and literature of the country followed,
somewhat, the methods of the quaint and curious school,
but the land, notwithstanding, was a much more cheerful.
place to live in, I dreamt. -
But I never finished telling you about the dream in
which I thought I left my legs behind me, when I went
into a certain theatre.
I dreamt that the ticket the man gave me for my legs
was No. Ig, and I was worried all through the perform-
ance for fear No. 61 should get hold of them, and leave
me his instead. Mine are rather a fine pair of legs, and
I am, I confess, a little proud of them—at all events, I
prefer them to anybody else’s. Besides, number sixty-
one's might be a skinny pair, and not fit me.
It quite spoilt my evening, fretting about this.
Another extraordinary dream I had was one in which
I dreamt that I was engaged to be married to my Aunt
Jane. That was not, however, the extraordinary part of
it : I have often known people to dream things like that.
|
DREAMS. 305
/
I knew a man who once dreamt that he was actually
married to his own mother-in-law He told me that never
in his life had he loved the alarm clock with more deep
and grateful tenderness than he did that morning. The
dream almost reconciled him to being married to his real
wife. They lived quite happily together, after that dream,
for a few days.
No ; the extraordinary part of my dream was, that I
knew it was a dream. “What on earth will uncle say to
this engagement 2 ” I thought to myself, in my dream.
“There’s bound to be a row about it. We shall have a
deal of trouble with uncle, I feel sure.” And this thought
quite troubled me until the sweet reflection came : “Ah !
well, it’s only a dream.”
And I made up my mind that I would wake up as
soon as uncle found out about the engagement, and leave
him and Aunt Jane to fight
the matter out between them-
selves.
It is a very great comfort,
when the dream grows
troubled and alarming,
to feel that it is only a
dream, and to know that
we shall awake soon,
and be none the worse ſº
for it. We can dream
out the foolish perplex-
ity with a smile then.
Sometimes the dream of life grows strangely troubled
and perplexing, and then he who meets dismay the bravest
is he who feels that the fretful play is but a dream—a
brief, uneasy dream of three score years and ten, or .

20 *
306 DREAMS.
thereabouts, from which, in a little while, he will awake
—at least, he dreams so.
How dull, how impossible, life would be without
dreams—waking dreams, I mean—the dreams that we
call “castles in the air,” built by the kindly hands of
Hope I Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing
his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveller would lie
down in the desert sand, and die. It is the mirage of
distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of
carrots fastened just beyond the donkey's nose, seems
always just within our reach, if only we will gallop
fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road
of Life. - -
Providence, like a father with a tired child, lures us
ever along the way with tales and promises, until, at the
frowning gate that ends the road, we shrink back, frightened.
Then, promises still more sweet he stoops and whispers
in our ear, and timid yet partly reassured, and trying to
hide our fears, we gather up all that is left of our little
stock of hope and, trusting yet half afraid, push out our
groping feet into the darkness.
THE END.
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ALAN 1)ALE.
| IUGH CON WAY.
|) AN I EL DO RM ER.
Mrs. J. COMYINS CARR
( ; RANT ALL P.N.
|HUG H CON WAY.
A N I) REW LANG,
J. STRANG); W INTER.
. Mrs. J. E. PANTON.
| JOHN COLEMAN and
... " \ JOHN C. CHUTE.
W. G. WILLS and
łłie Hon. Mrs. GREENE.
1, OBERT BUCHANA.N.
WILKIE COLLINS.
Mrs. L. L. LEWIS.
Hon. L, WINGFIELD.
JEAN M I DDLEMASS.
EDWATR 1) ROSE.
JOSEPH HATTON.
MAX O'RELL.
WALTER BESANT.
MATTHEW STRONG.
. GLADYS' PERIL .
, WHOSE HAND 7 or,
CARRISTON'S G|FT
The Mystery of No Man's Ieath
. THAT WINTER NIGH.T
." THE GUILTY RIVER .
. FATAL SHADOWS .
. THE LOVELY WANG .
. PATTY'S PARTNER .
s • ‘V. R.”
. THE PARK LANE MYSTERY
. FRIEND MAC DONALD
. KATHARINE REGINA
. UAN VERCLOOTZ
. THE CLIFF MYSTERY . t
. AS A Bi HD TO THE SNARE .
. TRACKED OUT e - e
. A SOCIETY CLOWN . - º
. CHECK AND COUNTER-CHECK
. THE INNER HOUSE .
. A VAGABON O Wil-L . .
, PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER . .
. TROLLOPE'S DjLEMMA .
7. JACQUES BONHOMME .
S. THE DOU BTS OF DIVES . . .
. FAIR PHYLLIS OF LAVENDER }JAMES GREENwood.
A Comedy of Errors
WHARF . g e º
. HARD LUCK. e º - e º
. TWO A ND TWO. A Tale of Four .
. THE RAJAH AND THE ROSEBUD
. BEHIND THE KAFES e sº
. The DEMONIAC
. OUR BOYS & GIRLS
AT SCHôoL.
HAMILTON AfDE.
GERTRUDE WARDEN.
ARTHUR A BECKETT.
GEORGE GROSSMITEI
{ BRANDER MATTEHEWS
and GEORGE. H. JESSOP.
WALTER BESANT.
W. G. WATERS.
. EDGAR LEE.
... ST. AUBYN.
MAX O'RELL.
W.A.L.T.E I: BESANT.
*
w
ARTEIU R A B FCKETT.
ELIZABETH (; JAISTER.
WIL |,I AM SIM E.
, MA RY ALBERT.
WALTER BESANT.
BENRY J. BARKER, B.A.
Bristol : J. W. ARRowsM ITII, 11 Quay Street.
Iondon: SIMPKiN, MARSHALL, IHAMILTON, KENT & Co. Limited.
SUPPLEMENTARY CATALOGUE. 3
ARRowsMITH's 2|- SERIES
Crown 8vo. Boards. *
Dead Men’s Dollars. By MAY CROMMELIN.
Author of “BRowN EYES.”
“The tale is told with an intensity of feeling.”—Daily Chronicle. ,
“A very bright and readable novél, full of incident and ‘go.'”—Daily News.
On the Wrong Tack. By A. E. WILTON.
“Is a smartly written story, the conversations are well managed and full of
sprightliness, and the plot is interesting.”—Literary World.
The Truth about Clement Ker.
Edited by GEORGE FLEMING.
“Clement Ker is by far the most exciting of the volumes lying before us."—
“There is strong writing in Clement Ker.”—Melbourne Argus. [Saturday Review.
Elizabeth Morley.
By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.
Authoress of “PATTY,” “AT THE RED GLovE,” &c.
. “Some charming pictures of life in out-of-the-way foreign places give addi
tional attraction to an interesting and altogether sympathetic story.”—Graphic.
Francis and Frances; or, An Unexplainable
Phenomenon,
“The idea on which it is ſounded is, so far as our experience goes, quite
unique,”—Western Figaro. -
“A most readable and enjoyable story."—The Bookseller.
Lal. By LORIN LATHROP and ANNIE wakeMAN.
“It is a bright and original tale, having its scene in San Francisco and else-
where in America"—Scotsman.
Monsignor. A Novel. By Mrs. CoMPTON READE.
Author of “Rose AND RUE,” “SIDONIE,” &c.
“Is decidedly out of the common run."—Bristol Times and Mirror.
“There is a captivating priest in it who has reduced the art of ‘lady-killing’
to quite a fine art. He is handsome and vain, and the reader pursues him, feeling
sure that he will turn out a scamp. But our author is not to be taken in that way,
and the end of the flirting priest is a surprise.”—Publishers' Circular.
Maria and I. By EDGAR LEE.
Author of “PHARAOH's DAUGHTER,” &c.
4 J. W. ARROWSMITH's
& Crown 4to. 5/-.
King Diddle. By H. C. Davidson.
Illustrated by E. A. LEMANN.
"A beautifully illustrated book for children.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
“Merrily described. The coloured illustrations are particularly refined and
graceful."—Graphic.
“Quaint and fanciful, it is well calculated to interest young readers.”—Scotsman.
“The story is charmingly told, and cannot fail to prove a source of great
delight to children.”—Manchester Courier. e
“A very pretty gift book, with beautiful type and paper, and charming drawings
by E. A. Lemann.”—Standard.
“Deals with the wondrous sight seen by two children in a lumber room one
night.”—Punch.
“Graceful and charming and original.”—Art journal
Feap. 4to, coloured cover, 3/6 (postage 3d.)
Buz ; or, The Life and Adventures of a Honey
Bee, . By MAURICE NoFL. Illustrated by LINLEY SAMBourn E.
“One of the best children's books this season.”—Saturday Review,
“Into this pretty little story the author has woven an interesting account of the
habits of bees.”—Bookseller.
“Swarming, comb-building, storing honey, and other incidents in bee economy,
are described in pleasant and familiar style.”—Literary World.
“Buz is partly a fairy tale, partly an account of the economy of a bee's life.”
A cademy.
“Under the guise of a cheerful insect biography Mr. Noel in Buz minutely
depicts the habits of bees, and gives an excellent idea of the busy workers and
their homes.”—Graphic.
“It is a book that can hardly fail to be a favourite with the young readers.”
School Board Chronicle,
Feap. 4to, coloured cover, 3/6.
Under the Water. By MAURICE NOEL. Author of “Buz.”
Drawings by E. A. LEMANN.
"Inevitably recalls Kingsley's Water Babies.”—Saturday Review.
“We have here something like a blending of the legend of Lurline and the
story of Alice in Wonderland.”—Daily News.
“The story is full of adventure and wonderment.”—Western Morning News.
“Children would be delighted with this tasteful book and its lively illus;.
Graphic,
“There is some pretty, fanciful writing; the pictures, too, are decide; #.
& Spectator,
"Much quiet humour is displayed in the narrative,”—Daily News,
Crown 8vo, cloth, 2/- (postage 3d, y
Folk Lore and Fairy Tales. By W. A. LEONARD.
. “Great credit is due to Mr. Leonard for the manner in which he has handled
his subject; many of his stories are derived from German, and some few from
Oriental sources."—Bookseller,
SUPPLEMENTARY CATALOGUE. 5
Crown 8vo, 300 pp., Stiff boards, 3/6.
JONATHAN AND HIS (ONTINENT
by MAX O’RELL.
Author of “John BULL AND HIS ISLAND,”
“FRIEND MAC DoNALD,” &c.
“The book is delightful reading; light, bright, witty, never deep but never
dull. It is vastly enteraining.”—Scotsman,
“Max O'Rell's book is creating a stir throughout the length and breadth of
America. 45,000 copies were sold within a week of publication.”—New York
World,
Fcap. 8vo, 3 vols., stiff covers, 3/-, cloth, 3/- (postage 4d.)
Diary of an Idle Woman in Sicily.
By FRANCEs ELLIOT.
Author of “THE RED CARDINAL,” “OLD Court LIFE IN FRANCE,” &c,
“A charming and popular History of Sicily.”—The Bookselley,
“Mrs. Frances Elliot's charming and wivacious Diary of an Idle Woman in
Sicily, in two volumes, as bright and readable as could be desired.”—Society.
“A charming edition of this delightful book in a couple of portable little
volumes, excellently printed, which are bound to find favour with the public.”
Morning Advertiser
Feap. 8vo, cloth, 1/- (postage 3d.)
Home Nursing: Lectures on Domestic Hygiene.
By LIONEL A. WEATHERLY, M.D.
Admirably brief and succinct, giving simple rules which must remain in the
worst memory.”—Graphic. tº
“This is an excellent work, The subject of home nursing is a most important
one and has scarcely received the practical attention that it deserves.”
Pictorial World
FCap. 8vo, coloured wrapper, 1/-
sº [FIFTH EDITION.]
Have Patience. By F. Guise.
Contains instructions for playing fifty different games of Patience.
“Many remarkable men have turned to 3’atience as a rest for brains exhausted
by severer studies.”—Daily Express.
Feap. 8vo, stiff covers, 1/-
Curtain Raisers. For Amateurs and others.
By FRANK DESPREZ.
“The issue of such a book is a good sign of returning attention to an im-
portant department of the theatre,"—Globe,
6 J. W. ARROWSMITH'S
Crown 4to. Cloth 5/-
FAIRY TALE BY ANDREW LANG
The Gold of Fairnilee.
FRONTISPIECE by T. SCOTT, and FOURTEEN ILLUSTRATIONs
(in colours) by E. A. LEMANN.
“A Fairy Tale by a Master of the Craft.”—Glasgow Herald.
“The tale is written with admirable simplicity and charm.”—Scotsman.
Crown 8vo, parchment back, paper sides, 3/6.
A Life’s Idylls, and other Poems.
By HUGH ConwAY.
A uthor of “CALLED Back,” “DARK Days,” &c., &c.
“Marked by a freshness of inspiration which is in itself a rare and welcome
merit.”—Morning Post. tº
Crown 8vo, 302 pp., cloth, 3/6. (Published at 5/-. )
Soap. A Romance.
By CoNSTANCE MACEwBN (Mrs. A. C. DICKER),
Author of “Miss BEAUCHAM,” “A PHILISTINE,” &c.
“Decidedly both clever and amusing.”—Literary World.
“Teems with original thought and purity of style.”—john Bull.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 3/6.
Twycross’s Redemption. By ALFRED ST. Johnston,
Author of “CAMPING AMONG CANNIBALs,”
“IN QUEST of GoLD,” &c., &c.
Eight Illustrations by GoRDon BRowNE.
“Rightly calls itself a story of wild adventure.”—Athenaeum.
“There are few Christmas books that equal it in interest.”—London Figaro,
Fcap. folio. Price 5/-, published at 10/6.
Pen and Pencil Notes on the Riviera and
North Italy. By MARY D. ToTHILL.
Forty-seven full-page Pen and Ink Sketches.
“There is a freshness and directness about the whole book which is very
charming, and many of the illustrations show genuine artistic power.”—Fiargo.
Crown 8vo, 1/6. Cloth, 2/6.
Lawn-Tennis : its Rise and Progress.
Including Biographical Sketch and Portrait of Ernest Renshaw, W. Renshaw,
H. F. Lawford, W. J. Hamilton, E. W. Lewis, E. de S. H. Browne, H. Grove,
C. Lacy Sweet, Miss L. Dod. And a Treatise on the Game.
By W. METHVEN BROWNLEE.
Author of “THE BIOGRAPHY of W. G. GRACE.”
Admitted by all the Champion Players to be the best work on the game that
has yet appeared.
SUPPLEMENTARY CATALOGUE. 7
Démy Svo, 460 pages. 7/6.

NO. 747.
BEING
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A GIPSY.
Edited by F. W. CAREW, M.D.
“The writer of the book has obviously an exceptional knowledge of the
Romany speech and character; and those who make a special study of gipsy
life will find the book repay perusal."—Glasgow Herald, Dec. 22nd, 1890.
... “Charmingly written, and in itself quite an education in the soft and liquid
lingo of the Romany.”—Sporting Times, Dec. 13th, 1890.
Crown 8vo, 342 pages. 5/-
Dick Ghichester;
3.
T H E VVO O I N G O F T H E C O U N T Y.
By E. M. ROACH.
“Decidedly above the average political novel."—Saturday Review.
“There is not a dull page in the book.”—Church Bells.
“Many of the characters are admirably drawn; and there are delightful flashes
of humour.”—Speaker.
Crown 8vo, 190 pages. 3/-
THE YOUNG MAN'S PARABLE,
T H E P R O DIG. A. L S O N.
A STORY FOR TO-DAY.
By The REV. G. D. EVANS,
of BRISTOL,
Author of “Within the Gates; or, Glimpses of the Glorifled Life,” &c., &G
8 J. W. ARRowsMITH's
Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2/-
S E V E N I L L U S T R A T I O N S.

MOnte Carlo

AND ELOW TO DO IT.
By W. F. GOLDBERG and G. CHAPLIN PIESSE.
“The authors know their subject well, and give some useful information.”—
“Is full of valuable information,”—Court Circular. Scotsman,
Broad Feap 8vo, 180 pp., 1/-
S E N I L I A,
POEMS IN PROSE :
BEING MEDITATIONS, SKETCHES, &c.
By IVAN TURGENIEFF.
English Version, with Introduction and Biographical Sketch
of the Author, by S. J. MACMULLAN.
“The booklet should do something to popularise the author in this country,”
—Globe. -
“This charmingly simple and carefully-phrased translation is worthy of the
highest commendation.”—Glasgow Herald.
“There is infinite beauty, pathos, vigour, and individuality in this rendering
of the old man's half-conscious, unaffected comments on the events and the
influence of his lifelong work.”—Whitehall Review,
SUPPLEMENTARY CATALOGUE. 9
Crown Svo, paper covers, 1/-, cloth, 31-
TOURMAINS TIME CHEQUES
A FARCICAL EXTRAVAGANCE.
By F. ANSTEY,
Author of “VICE VERSA,” “VocEs PopULI,”
“THE TINTED VENUs,” &c.
“Mr. ANSTEY is always welcome; some think him “our only humorist.'. Mr.
ANSTEY's talent combines very minute observation, with a taste for the farcically
extravagant. His motive is odd in such a kindly and friendly genius, for he always
likes to show us a harmless fellow struggling with the direst series of perplexin
circumstances. . . . It is easy to imagine what fun Mr. ANSTEY gets out of al
this, and how ruthlessly he lodges his hero in trouble, while a dilemma is for ever
“sounding her dread orns' at his doors. It is needless to explain how all ends;
the reader should not be deprived of the pleasure of his “bob's vorth,’ as Mr. Pick-
wick's cabman says.”—Daily News.
“Only a person who had determined to find faults could discover any in this
little volume."—The Glasgow Herald.
Broad cap. 8vo, 143 pp., cloth, 3/6.
PRINCE PRIGIO
AN ORIGINAL FAIRY TALE.
By ANDREW LANG,
Author of “THE MARK OF CAIN,” “THE GOLD OF FAIRNILEE,” &c.
FRONTISPIECE and 26 ILLUSTRATIONS
By GORDON BROWNE.
Large paper edition, price One Guinea, on hand-made paper. One hundred
copies printed. Twelve only left,
“A pleasant and humorous web of fantasy.”—Glasgow Herald.
“The whole book.has the quaint charm with which Mr. Lang invests all that
cornes from his pen.”—The World.
“A clever and amusing story.”—Spectator.
“This is a dainty little book.”—Pall Mall Gazette,
“Much food for amusement, as well as an elo
and priggery.”—Scots Observer quent denunication of cleverness
to J. W. ARRowsMITH's
, Crown 8vo, 350 pp., cloth, 3/6.
Three Men in a Boat.
(TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG.)
By JEROME K. JEROME,
Author of “IDLE THocGHTs of AN IDLE FELLow,” “STAGELANn,”
- ETC.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. FREDERICs.
“It would be dangerous to read this book in any place—say a full railway
compartment—where the reader was not at perfect liberty to laugh as loudly
and as long as he choose.”—Glasgow Herald. &
“It is impossible to read any single chapter in the book without indulging in
the heartiest laughter, so quaint are the turns of thought and the manner of
expression. . . . . Mr. Jerome has been lucky to s º belp of Mr. A.
Frederics as illustrator of his thrice delightful voluttle . t is embellished with
the most artistic illustrations, which add consideraßlºcºm of reading.”
—Whitehall Review. * * º • *-**
“His book is one to buy, read, and laugh at quand meme,"—Land and Water.
* 3.
* * • . . ...is * * * * * * .
Crown 8vo, cloth, 388 pp., 3/6.
The End of a Life.
By EDEN PHILLPOTTS,
“This is a work of great interest and power. Readers who like a powerfully-
written tale will find their wishes realised in The End of a Life.”—Preston Herald,
“Lovers of sensational fiction will find this book sufficiently exciting for the
most jaded palate.”—The Gentlewoman.
“The plot is original, the characters are º pictured and ably grouped,
the dialogue is excellent, and there are not a few striking sayings. The End of a
Life is well written, well considered, and well planned. The two sisters, Mary
and Rose, are delightful studies of pure and truthful womanhood.”–1 nº
4th engiſm, - -
DD NOT REMOVE
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