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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Around the clock in Europe, by Charles
+Fish Howell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Around the clock in Europe
+       A travel sequence
+
+Author: Charles Fish Howell
+
+Release Date: June 26, 2023 [eBook #71043]
+
+Language: English
+
+Credits: Fiona Holmes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+         http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+         generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+         Libraries.)
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROUND THE CLOCK IN
+EUROPE ***
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note
+
+ Page 76 — conquerers changed to =conquerors=
+ Page 171 — expecially changed to =especially=
+ Page 226 — Funicolà changed to =Funiculà=
+
+
+AROUND THE CLOCK IN EUROPE
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  PIAZZA SAN MARCO FROM THE GRAND CANAL _Page 305_]
+
+
+
+
+    AROUND THE CLOCK IN
+    EUROPE
+
+    A Travel-Sequence
+
+    BY
+
+    CHARLES FISH HOWELL
+
+    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+    HAROLD FIELD KELLOGG
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+    The Riverside Press Cambridge
+
+    1912
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CHARLES FISH HOWELL
+
+    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+    _Published October 1912_
+
+    TO
+
+    HELEN EDITH HOWELL
+
+
+    _Sweet the memory is to me_
+    _Of a land beyond the sea._
+
+    LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+IN EXPLANATION
+
+
+The pages that follow should best account for themselves, of course,
+but for the satisfaction of those who very properly require some
+general conception of a project before definitely entering upon it, the
+author begs to say that he has here sought to visualize to the reader
+the appearance and the life of these cities at the hours indicated,
+and to preserve, as well, the distinctive atmosphere of each. He has
+endeavored to catch and present faithful impressions of the streets,
+their kaleidoscopic animation, and the activities and characteristics
+of the people; to touch the pen-pictures with a light overwash of the
+racial and national peculiarities that distinguish each, and to invest
+them with what insight, sympathy, and enthusiasm he is capable of. It
+is “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase,” as Mr. Howells has
+so aptly described the process and as he himself has so wonderfully
+exemplified it. A formidable undertaking? Indeed, yes; but there is the
+dictum of Mr. Browning that the purpose swells the account.
+
+These, then, are impressionistic sketches. They are of the moment only.
+It has been sought, most of all, to give them just that character. They
+have been written as reflecting the probable observations and emotions
+of visitors of normal enthusiasm during these hours and in these
+environs. Under such conditions, it is well to remember, every active
+mind has its sudden, drifting excursions afield; something in the
+visible, present surroundings whimsically invokes the subtle genii of
+Memory and Imagination, and one is whisked off in a breath, and without
+rhyme or reason, to the most ultimate and alluring Isles of Thought.
+These swift and scarcely accountable flights are the common experience
+of all travelers, and the author has felt it to be a part of his task
+to take proper cognizance of them.
+
+Travel is generally conceded to be one of the most informing and
+diverting of engagements, and to gain in both particulars in proportion
+to the favorableness of the conditions under which it is prosecuted.
+It is, therefore, a satisfaction to be in position to afford readers
+advantages scarcely obtainable elsewhere. Discarding conventions of
+time and space, the author undertakes to give them twelve _consecutive_
+happy hours in Europe,—once around the clock,—always endeavoring
+to secure the most favorable union of hour and place. And though
+there may be dissent from his judgment concerning the superiority of
+this combination or that, there can hardly be two opinions as to the
+perfection of the transportation facilities. The latter eliminate time
+and space, and convey the reader from city to city and from point to
+point, with no discomfort or inconvenience whatever, and without the
+loss of so much as a tick of the watch.
+
+With foot in the stirrup, it may be added that there has been an
+earnest desire to entertain those whom circumstances have hitherto kept
+at home, as also to revive to memory golden recollections for travelers
+who have already passed along these pleasant ways. What is here offered
+is just a new portfolio of sketches from Nature; the touch of another
+but reverent hand on the old and well-loved scenes. Surely there can be
+no better reason for any book than a desire to share with others the
+happiness experienced by
+
+  THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    EDINBURGH—1 P.M. TO 2 P.M.       1
+
+    ANTWERP—2 P.M. TO 3 P.M.        33
+
+    ROME—3 P.M. TO 4 P.M.           69
+
+    PRAGUE—4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.        101
+
+    SCHEVENINGEN—5 P.M. TO 6 P.M.  135
+
+    BERLIN—6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.        153
+
+    LONDON—7 P.M. TO 8 P.M.        183
+
+    NAPLES—8 P.M. TO 9 P.M.        215
+
+    HEIDELBERG—9 P.M. TO 10 P.M.   249
+
+    INTERLAKEN—10 P.M. TO 11 P.M.  273
+
+    VENICE—11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT     299
+
+    PARIS—MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M.       329
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    PIAZZA SAN MARCO FROM THE GRAND CANAL (page 305) _Frontispiece_
+
+    EDINBURGH CASTLE                                 1
+
+    EDINBURGH, PRINCES STREET                        4
+
+    THE WHOLE FAMILY                                33
+
+    ANTWERP, FROM THE SCHELDT                       42
+
+    IN THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN                   69
+
+    ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA                      90
+
+    THE PULVERTURM                                 101
+
+    PRAGUE, THE CASTLE FROM THE OLD BRIDGE         108
+
+    DUTCH GIRLS ARE ALWAYS KNITTING                135
+
+    SCHEVENINGEN BEACH                             140
+
+    IN THE SIEGES-ALLÉE                            153
+
+    BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN                       160
+
+    TRAFALGAR SQUARE                               183
+
+    LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE  212
+
+    MARGHERITA                                     215
+
+    THE BAY OF NAPLES                              220
+
+    A HEIDELBERG STUDENT                           249
+
+    HEIDELBERG, FROM THE CASTLE TERRACE            252
+
+    DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN                         273
+
+    INTERLAKEN, ON THE HOTEL LAWN                  282
+
+    PIAZZA SAN MARCO                               299
+
+    VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA         304
+
+    A GARGOYLE OF NOTRE DAME                       329
+
+    PARIS, ON THE BOULEVARD                        334
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+AROUND THE CLOCK
+
+IN EUROPE
+
+
+
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+1 P.M. TO 2 P.M.
+
+
+Up there on the gusty heights of Edinburgh no one ever inquires the
+time at one o’clock in the afternoon. Precisely at the second, a ball
+flutters to the top of the Nelson flagstaff on Calton Hill and a
+cannon booms from a battery at Castle Rock; and watches are then set
+by merchants all over town, by shepherds on the shaggy Pentland Hills,
+and sailors on ships in the lee of Leith. And one o’clock is the very
+best time Edinburgh could have fixed upon to encourage her people to
+look up and about and behold her at her finest. It is luncheon-hour,
+and when the sun is kindly, “Auld Reekie” is just about as garish and
+stimulating as it is possible for a town of such dignified traditions
+and questionable climate ever to become. The air freshens in from
+blustering Leith, and fair Princes Street wears its most beguiling
+smiles. One thrills with the joy of being alive in so brave and bonny
+a world, with the bluebells and heather of Old Scotland about him and
+this town of song and story at his feet. He gazes at the cheerful
+crowds moving leisurely along the valley gardens elegant with statues
+and flowered lawns, or across at the frowzy heads in rickety garret
+windows away up among the palsied gables of ancient High Street, and
+he knows that over there is the Canongate of stern tradition and the
+storied St. Giles’ and black Holyrood, and beyond them he sees the
+Salisbury Crags, a gaunt palisade halfway up to lofty Arthur’s Seat. He
+has just arrived, perhaps, with the glow on his face of all he has read
+and heard of this famed place, and the bugles are singing on Castle
+Hill and the Edinburgh bells are ringing.
+
+There is little opportunity for preliminary impressions while
+arriving. The train darts up a valley before you have finished with
+the suburban cottages of the laboring men, and with an ultimate shriek
+of relief abruptly dives into its cave, as it were, and deposits you
+unceremoniously in the esplanaded Waverley Station, with flowered
+walks above and a market just at hand. The wise traveler gathers up
+his luggage and fares eagerly forth to Princes Street, as a matter
+of course. There, on the way to his hotel, he finds a good part of
+Edinburgh idling pleasantly after luncheon, for Princes Street is
+the dear delight of the loiterer be he old or young, Robin or Jean.
+He is studied as he passes through the crowds, curiously, smilingly,
+critically, tolerantly. His clothing may excite disapproval, his
+baggage amusement, and his intentions speculation. Curiosity “takes the
+air” at noon. Arrived in a moment at a Princes Street hotel and duly
+registered, he is handed a curious disk of white cardboard the size of
+an after-dinner coffee-cup’s top, upon which is blazoned the number of
+the room to which he has just been assigned. Preceded by a chambermaid
+gowned in black and aproned in white and followed by a porter with
+his traps, he advances grandly to his quarters, according to the tag,
+and hurries to a window for his first keen impression of the “Modern
+Athens.”
+
+[Illustration: EDINBURGH, PRINCES STREET]
+
+Just why it should be called an “Athens” would scarcely be apparent
+from a Princes Street hotel window. The literary rights to the title
+might be conceded, but the stranger will need to view the town from
+some neighboring height to appreciate the physical similarity between
+the two cities and to observe the suggestiveness of the Castle and the
+reminder of the Acropolis in the “ruin”-crowned summit of Calton Hill.
+What he does see from his window is sufficiently inspiring. At his feet
+stretches Princes Street which he has heard called the finest avenue in
+Europe, and along its other side terraces of vivid turf, set with shade
+trees and statues and flowered walks, drop down in graceful steps to
+the lawns in the bottom of the valley that was once the North Loch’s
+basin and where now, to Edinburgh’s chagrin, are the railroad tracks.
+Across these gardens vaults a boulevard styled “The Mound,” and on
+their farther side is the gray old Castle on its precipitous crag with
+a soft sweep of green braes at its base. On the Castle side of the
+valley the far-famed High Street turns the venerable backs of its tall,
+tottering, weather-blackened rookeries on the frivolity of Princes
+Street, and scornfully gives its laundry to the breeze in hundreds of
+heaped and crooked gable-windows. Centuries before any of us were born
+those fantastic and whimsical family nests were lined up as we see them
+to-day. One could fancy them a row of colossal, prehistoric giraffes
+with their tails all our way, nibbling imaginary tree-tops on High
+Street. The stranger will lean out of his window and look down Princes
+Street and start with delight to see that “sublimest monument to a
+literary genius,” the lace-like Gothic spire to Scott, where, under a
+springing canopy of arches and aspiring needles studded with statues of
+the immortal characters he created, sits the great Sir Walter himself
+in snowy Carrara, with his favorite hound at his feet. And one’s heart
+warms to this romantic Edinburgh so beloved of him and of the fiery
+Burns, the passionate Chalmers, the gentle Allan Ramsay, and Jeffrey
+of the brilliant “far-darting” criticisms. Here, in their time, mused
+Robert Fergusson and David Livingstone and Smollett and Hume and
+Goldsmith and De Quincey and “Kit North” and Carlyle; and but yesterday
+has added the name of Stevenson, not the least loved of them all. What
+inspiration this region must have kindled to have given to Art such
+sons as Gordon, Drummond, Nasmyth, Wilkie, Raeburn, and Faed! Could
+the roster of old Greyfriars Burying-Ground be called, one would marvel
+at the number of great names there memorialized that are familiar and
+beloved to the remotest, out-of-the-way corners of the earth. And so
+the new arrival closes his window more slowly than he raised it and
+steals reverently down into the street to meet this Edinburgh face to
+face.
+
+You might think, to hear Americans talk at home, that every other
+Edinburgh man carries a dirk or a claymore under a tartan and wears a
+ferocious red beard like the pictures of Rob Roy; that people go about
+in plaid shawls and tam o’shanters, and that most society functions end
+up with a Highland fling. One may see at wayside railroad stations,
+as in our own country, wild, hair-blown lassies with flaming cheeks
+running in from the hills to have a look at the train; but with some
+such mild exception, if it is one, the Scots on their native heath
+are, of course, precisely what we are used to elsewhere. Types apart,
+the man of the streets of Edinburgh looks entirely familiar—shrewd
+and combative, rugged and perhaps hard, slouchy and indifferent in
+the matter of dress, hobnailed and be-capped. There is something
+tremendously genuine and wholesome about him. He is merry and brisk
+and lively, often; but you would not call him ever quite gay—at least
+with that sparkle that dances in the eyes you look into on the Paris
+boulevards. You could scarcely, for instance, imagine a Scotchman
+singing a barcarolle! Best of all they are honest and sincere, and
+one takes to them at once. Here are the lassies and laddies you have
+long sung about, fresh-faced and debonair. Cheerful fearlessness shines
+out of their frank blue eyes, and they look to dare all things and be
+utterly unafraid. The square foreheads of the older men, the austere
+cheek bones and strong chins, unscroll history to the observer and make
+him think of savage broils along the border, of fierce finish-fights
+throughout the wild Highlands, and of the deathless Grays of Waterloo.
+You may defeat a Scotchman, but he will never admit it, and if he
+is all-Scotch he will not even know it. They are brave, witty, and
+devoted, and many a person will take issue with Swift for finding their
+conversation “hardly tolerable,” and with Lamb for pronouncing their
+“tediousness provoking” and for giving them up in despair of ever
+learning to like them.
+
+The new arrival plunges into Princes Street, accepts inspection
+good-naturedly, and soon feels entirely at home. He may even find the
+day bright and cheerful, in spite of apprehension over the dictum
+of Stevenson that this climate is “the vilest under heaven.” The
+street is quite unusual—one side a terraced valley, the other a
+splendid line of shops, clubs, and hotels, with gay awnings. Paris
+and London novelties fill the windows. A throng of vehicles bustles
+up and down—motor-busses, double-decked trolley cars, taxi-cabs,
+hired Victorias, two-wheeled carts, brewery wagons, station lorries,
+tourists’ _chars-à-bancs_ with drivers in scarlet liveries, private
+carriages and bicycles. The stream of people on either pavement is
+of the holiday cheeriness that comes with the luncheon recess from
+office and shop, though here and there one may occasionally discover
+some “sour-looking female in bombazine” that recalls R. L. S.’s “Mrs.
+McRankin” and who appears as ready as she to inquire whether we
+attend to our “releegion.” The restaurants are plying a brisk trade,
+contenting their tarrying guests, speeding the parting and hailing
+the coming. Whole coveys of pretty shop-girls with brilliant cheeks,
+wholesome and vivacious, come chattering and laughing out of tea- and
+luncheon-rooms and flutter back to work with frequent enthusiastic
+stops before alluring windows. Workmen in tweed caps and clerks in
+straw hats pass by, to or from their occupations, and always with
+lingering looks toward the Princes Street Gardens, so that one can
+accurately guess whether they are coming from or going to office by
+applying the reliable Shakespearean formula—
+
+  “Love goes to Love as schoolboys from their books,
+  And Love from Love to school with heavy looks.”
+
+The air is rhythmic with the up-and-down slur of this speech of
+“aye” and “na.” Curious faces flash past. Threadbare lawyers argue
+pompously as they saunter back arm in arm toward Parliament Close,
+and the ruddy-cheeked girls, by contrast, seem so distracting that a
+foreigner rages at the sentiment that “kissing is out of season when
+the gorse is out of bloom.” Occasionally, even at so early an hour,
+there is evidence of the passion for drink. “Willie brew’d a peck o’
+maut” flashes to mind, and one fancies the unsteady ones are trying
+to hum, “We are na fou, we’re no that fou, but just a drappie in our
+ee.” When night comes on, sober men in the streets have reason to
+frown censoriously; and if it be a Saturday night, they may even feel
+lonesome.
+
+A passing regiment is a welcome interruption and a brave spectacle.
+It is always hailed with shouts of joy. All Edinburgh turns in its
+bed Sunday mornings at nine to see the Black Watch come out from the
+Castle for “church parade” at St. Giles’s. Nothing stirs Princes Street
+on any week day like a military display. It is a thrilling moment to
+a stranger, perhaps, when he has his first glimpse of a young Tommy
+Atkins, and he stops stock-still to take in the bright scarlet,
+tailless jacket, the tight trousers, the “pill-box” perilously cocked
+over an ear, and the inevitable “swagger cane” with which he slaps his
+leg as he braves it along. But what is that to the passing of a company
+of Highlanders! Along they come, kilts and plaids, sporrans swinging,
+claymores rattling, and jolly Glengarry bonnets poised rakishly to the
+falling point. Ten pipers are droning and three drummers are pounding;
+and one watches, as they pass, for the holly sprig, or what-not, they
+wear in their bonnets as a badge of the clan. The best show is made by
+the King’s Highlanders from up Balmoral way; and splendid they are in
+royal Stuart tartan, with the oak leaf and thistle in their bonnets and
+each man carrying a Lochaber axe. If there is anything more inspiriting
+than cheery bagpipe music at such a time, no one to laugh foolishly at
+it and every one to love it, and the men stepping proudly and the crowd
+applauding,—I, for one, do not know it.
+
+Keenness of impressions, as we all know, may depend on the most trivial
+circumstances of time and place. I recall, for example, a sharp and
+thrilling musical experience in Scotland, with the instrument nothing
+more than the despised and humble mouth-organ. Perhaps it was the
+mood, perhaps the setting, perhaps the unexpectedness of it; there
+was so little and yet so much. At all events, I shall not soon forget
+the sparkle and stir of “The British Grenadiers” as it ripped the
+sharp night air of quiet Melrose to the approach of three English
+soldiers, one with the mouth-organ and the others whistling in time as
+they marched briskly along. I shall always remember the rhythmic beat
+of their feet as they swung across the murky, deserted square, the
+loudness, the thrill, and the lilt of that historic melody, and the
+flicker of a lamp in a window here and there and the pleasant sting of
+the keen night air.
+
+There is no better place for a stranger to “get his bearings” in
+Edinburgh than out on that valley-spanning boulevard they call “The
+Mound.” He then has the Old Town to one side and the New Town to the
+other, and on opposite corners, as if to maintain the balance, the
+Castle and Calton Hill. He also takes note of the several bridges
+that clamp the town together, as it were; and he may look down into
+the gardens before him and watch the children playing as far as the
+promenade-covered Waverley Station, or he may turn and look the other
+way and see quite as many more all the way along the pleasant green to
+the old battle-scarred West Kirk of St. Cuthbert’s where De Quincey
+lies in his quiet grave. Thus he will find himself of a sunny afternoon
+between the pleasant horns of a most agreeable dilemma. He must choose
+whether to spend his first hour in the New Town or the Old. If he
+remembers what Ruskin said he will fly from the New; but then he may go
+there, after all, if he recalls the opinion of the old skipper cited
+by Stevenson, whose most radiant conception of Paradise was “the New
+Town of Edinburgh, with the wind the matter of a point free.” He must
+decide whether his present inclination is for latter-day city features,
+like conventional streets lined with substantial gray stone buildings
+looking all very much alike, for the fashionables of Charlotte Square
+and Moray Place and the bankers and brokers of St. Andrew Square, or
+the historic ground of crowded old High Street and the Castle and
+Holyrood. He would find in the New Town some old places, too, for
+it is one hundred and fifty years old, and there are the literary
+associations of the last century and the house on Castle Street where
+Scott lived more than a quarter-century—“poor No. 39,” as he called it
+in his Journal—and wrote the early Waverley Novels, and rejoiced along
+with his mystified friends in the tremendous success of “The Great
+Unknown.” He would find it a rapidly modernizing city; no longer may
+the children salute the lamplighter on his nightly rounds with “Leerie,
+Leerie, licht the lamps!” But he would find the most interesting things
+there the oldest things, and they all in the Antiquarian Museum—and
+what a show! John Knox’s pulpit, the banners of the Covenanters, the
+“thumbikins” that “aided” confession and the guillotine “Maiden” that
+rewarded it, the pistols Robert Burns used as an exciseman, and the
+sea-chest and cocoanut cup of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson
+Crusoe; and there, too, is Bonnie Prince Charlie’s blue ribbon of
+the Garter and the ring Flora Macdonald gave him when they parted.
+If historic paraphernalia is alluring, however, the scenes of its
+associations are much more so; and our friend would doubtless hesitate
+no longer, but turn to the Old Town and trudge up the steep way to the
+Castle.
+
+    “You tak’ the high road
+    And I’ll tak’ the low road,
+    And I’ll get to Scotland afore ye”;—
+
+and if the song had kept to geography it would probably have added,
+“And we’ll meet at the bonny Castle o’ Auld Reekie.” Such, at least,
+has been a Scotch custom for thirteen hundred years; and with every
+reason. Through the long and cruel centuries it has gathered to
+its flinty gray bosom memories of every possible phase of national
+mutation, desperate or glorious, gloomy or gay. One approaches it with
+awe. So long has it gripped the summit of that impregnable rock, half
+a thousand feet sheer on three of its sides, that it has blended into
+the life and color of its foundations, like a huge chameleon, until one
+could scarcely say where rock leaves off and castle begins. A stern and
+pitiless object, tolerating only here and there a grassy crevice at its
+base, and a clinging tree or two. In the great “historic mile” of High
+Street, lifting gradually from Holyrood to this rugged elevation, one
+feels the illusion of an enormous scornful finger extended dramatically
+westward toward the traditional rival, Glasgow. There is no need to
+see Highland regiments drilling on its broad esplanade, or to enter
+its sally-port or penetrate the dungeons in its rocky depths to have
+confidence that the royal regalia of “The Honours of Scotland” are safe
+enough here, on the red cushions in their iron cage. One enters, and
+there settles upon him a feeling of sharing in every grim tradition
+since the doughty days “when gude King Robert rang.” It is not a visit;
+it is an initiation.
+
+Quite worthy of this savage stronghold is the inspiring outlook from
+its parapets over hills and rivers and storied glens. One turns
+impatiently from “Mons Meg,” which may have been a big gun in some
+past day of little ones, to gaze afar over the carse of Stirling
+and the trailing silver links of the Forth to where the snow shines
+in the clefts of Ben Ledi, or out over the Pentland Hills where the
+“Sweet Singers” awaited the Judgment. The sportsman will think of
+the grouse-shooting at Loch Earn; the sentimentalist will reflect
+that when night settles over Aberdeenshire the pipers will strike
+up their strathspeys and there will be Scotch reels by torchlight.
+Scotland seems unrolled at your feet and Scottish songs rush to mind
+until you fairly bound the region in verse and story: To the north
+and northwest, “Bonnie Dundee,” the glens of “Clan Alpine’s warriors
+true,” Bannockburn and “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” and “The Banks
+of Allan Water”; to the north and east, the Firth of Forth where the
+fishwives’ “puir fellows darkle as they face the billows”; to the west
+and southwest, “The banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,” “Tam o’Shanter’s”
+land, “Sweet Afton” and “Bonnie Loch Leven” whence “the Campbells are
+comin’”; and to the south, “The braes of Yarrow,” “Norham’s castled
+steep, Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep, and Cheviot’s mountains
+lone,” and, most sung of all, “The Border”:—
+
+    “England shall, many a day, tell of the bloody fray
+    When the blue bonnets came over the border.”
+
+The afternoon sun rests brightly on the pretty glen in the foreground
+where lie the dismal, bat-flown ruins of Rosslyn Castle, loopholed for
+archers and shadowed in ancient yews that have overhung the Esk for
+a thousand years, and on the delicate chapel of stone-lace where the
+barons of Rosslyn await the Judgment in full armor with finger-tips
+joined in prayer. And there, too, are the cool, dark thickets of
+Hawthornden, recalling the ever-popular
+
+    “Gang down the burn, Davy Love,
+    And I will follow thee.”
+
+One cannot forbear a smile as he surveys the noble bridge that spans
+the Forth and recalls the insistent pride of Edinburgh in the same.
+Here is an achievement over which all visitors are expected to exclaim
+in amazement—and engineers, I presume, invariably do. On this point
+your Edinburgh man is immovable. He scorns to elaborate and he will not
+descend to eulogy. He merely indicates it with a reverent inclination
+of the head, and turns and looks you in the eye; you are supposed to do
+the rest. Personally, while I give the great structure its dues, which
+are many, I like what flows under it more.
+
+And there is one thing about the Forth that Edinburgh people never
+forget, nor do the visitors who find it out: “Caller herrin’!” It
+must have taxed the resources of even such a genius as Lady Nairne,
+whose home one may see if he looks beyond Holyrood to the villas
+of Duddingston, to have written two such dissimilar songs as the
+heart-melting “Land o’ the Leal” and the cheery “Caller Herrin’.”
+There’s the king of all marketing songs. It really compels one to
+think with despair of what a dreary mockery life would be were this,
+of all harvests, to fail. For love of that song I could defend the
+Forth herring against all competitors whatsoever. Loch Fyne herring?
+Fair fish, yes; but really, now, you would hardly say they have that
+racy flavor we get in the Forth article. Caller salmon? Oh, pshaw, you
+are from Glasgow; you have been swearing by caller salmon for five
+hundred years; have it on your coat of arms; used to draw it on legal
+papers as other people do seals;—but, honestly, have you ever seen a
+salmon in the Clyde, anywhere near Glasgow, in all your life? And if
+you did, would you eat it? Certainly not! So “give over,” as they say
+in England. Certainly there never was such pathos and unction devoted
+to just such a subject. And the music, too! How it compels you with its
+appealing monotones and rebukes you with the brave huckster cries on
+high F! So when you are passing near Waverley Market and encounter one
+of the picturesque Scandinavian fishwives, who has trudged in with her
+“woven willow” from her little stone house at Newhaven with the patched
+roof and quaint fore-stairs, unless you are willing to buy a herring
+then and there and carry it around in your pocket, run for your life
+before she starts singing:—
+
+    “When ye were sleeping on your pillows,
+    Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows,
+    Darkling as they face the billows,
+    A’ to fill our woven willows!
+
+    “Wha’ll buy caller herrin’?
+    They’re bonnie fish and halesome farin’;
+    Buy my caller herrin’,
+    New drawn frae the Forth.”
+
+To stroll down High Street is to unscroll Scottish history and survey
+Edinburgh of to-day at one and the same time. “Hie-gait,” as the
+old fellows still occasionally call it, is the “historic mile” _par
+excellence_ of Scotland. In its independent fashion it assumes new
+names as it meanders along, first Castle Hill, then Lawnmarket, then
+High Street, and finally Canongate. Even the afternoon sun ventures
+guardedly among the nest of tall, gaunt _lands_ that scowl at each
+other across its war-worn way. Bleak and glum to the peaked and gabled
+roofs, eight and ten stories above the sidewalk, they have resisted dry
+rot by a miracle of mortar and still hang together, doubtless to their
+own amazement, huddling a perfect enmeshment of tiny homes like some
+ingenious nest of boxes. It would be hard to imagine more drear and
+rickety domiciles or any more nervously overshadowed with an impending
+doom of dissolution. One looks anxiously about to see some venerable
+veteran give it up with a dismal, weary groan and collapse in a vast
+huddle of domestic wreckage. Fancy living where you have to scale
+breakneck stairs to a dizzy height and then reach your remote eyrie by
+a trembling gangway over an air well! The _closes_ or _wynds_ that are
+engulfed among these flat-chested ancients are equally surprising. One
+passes in from the street through a dirty entrance with a worn stone
+sill and a rudely carven doorhead inscribed with Scriptural and moral
+injunctions, and finds himself in an inner court fronted by dirty doors
+and palsied windows full of frowzy women, a cobbled pavement littered
+with refuse and a patch of sky half-hidden by fragments of laundry.
+And, mind you, these retreats are not without pride of tradition; many
+of them have entertained riches and royalty—but that was not last
+week. Lady Jane Grey was once hidden in famous White Horse Close, which
+must have fallen further than Lucifer to reach its present condition.
+Douglas Tavern was in one of them, where Burns and his brethren of the
+“Crochallan Club” were wont to revel with “Rattlin’, roarin’ Willie,
+and amang guid companie.” Legends, of course, abound. There was the
+case of the two stubborn sisters who quarreled one night and never
+spoke to each other again, though they lived the remainder of their
+lives together in the selfsame room. There’s Scotch persistence! Deacon
+Brodie was another instance, the “Raffles” of his time. He it was who
+used to ply his nefarious trade by night on the friends who knew him by
+day as a highly respectable cabinet-worker; and if you look furtively
+aloft at some dusty, closed shutter you can fancy the dark lantern
+glowing and the file rasping and the black mask drawn to his chin.
+Happily, they hanged him eventually; and, singularly enough, on the
+very gallows for which he had himself invented a very superior drop.
+
+A _close_, therefore, is so cheerless a spot that you could not well
+be worse off if you were to dive down the steep, wet steps of a
+neighboring slit of an alley and come out on the old Grassmarket of
+sinister renown where they hanged the Covenanters of the Moss Hags.
+As you gaze about on this ill-omened slum, once the home of many a
+prosperous and respected “free burgess,” but now given over to drovers
+and visiting farmers, and peer suspiciously up the adjoining West Port
+where Burke and Hare conducted their murders to get bodies for the
+surgeons, you are very apt to beat a hurried retreat and cry out with
+Claverhouse, “Come, open the West Port and let me gang free!”
+
+After one or two such explorations a stranger is content to pursue his
+investigation in the broad light of High Street. It seems delightful
+then to watch the barefooted boys in the street and the little girls
+in aprons and “pigtails.” And happily he may come across a shaggy
+steely-eyed old Highlander growling to a comrade in the guttural
+Gaelic, or perhaps a soldier in kilts and sporan. At this hour he
+will certainly see around Parliament Square groups of advocates and
+solicitors and “writers to the Signet,” and, it may be, some judge of
+the “Inner House” or “Outer House,” and possibly the Lord President
+himself. Otherwise he can take note of the uninviting shop-windows
+and the piles of merchandise on the sidewalks, and find entertainment
+in such unfamiliar signs as “provisioners,” “spirit merchants,”
+“bootmakers,” “hairdressers,” etc., with prices set forth in shillings
+and pence, or rejoice in a hostelry with so unusual a name as “The
+Black Bull Lodgings for Travellers and Working Men.”
+
+There are pleasant surprises. For instance, you find in the cobbled
+pavement the outline of a heart—and you do not have to be told that
+you are standing on the site of the terrible old Tolbooth prison, at
+the Heart of Midlothian. And what rushes to mind and displaces all
+other associations if not the fine story Sir Walter gave us under that
+name! Here, then, the Porteous mob swarmed and raged in its struggle
+to burn this savage Bastile, and here they tried and condemned poor
+Effie Deans and locked her up while the faithful Jeanie turned heaven
+and earth to save her, and the heart of old David broke. “The Heart of
+Midlothian!” Why, it is like being a boy all over again!
+
+Encouraged by this discovery, like a man who has just found a
+gold-piece, you keep a sharp lookout on the pavements, and presently
+comes a second reward in the shape of a brass tablet in the ground
+marking the last resting-place of stern John Knox. “There!” say you;
+“Dr. Johnson said he ought to be buried in the public road, and sure
+enough, he is!” What a man! He dared all things and feared nothing.
+How many a long discourse did Queen Mary herself supply him a topic
+for, and how often did he assail even her with personal rebukes and
+virulent public tirades! Thanks to the Free Church, his dwelling stands
+intact, farther down the street at the site of the Netherbow; and a
+fine specimen it is of sixteenth-century domestic Scotch architecture,
+with low ceilings and stairways scarce two feet wide—but, like its
+former austere tenant, narrow, cornery, and unpleasant. Implacable,
+unbending old John Knox! There is nothing in Browning more shuddering
+in imaginative flight than the quatrain:—
+
+    “As if you had carried sour John Knox
+    To the play-house at Paris, Vienna, or Munich,
+    Fastened him into a front-row box,
+    And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.”
+
+One makes a long stop before the far-famed church of St. Giles, half
+a thousand years old and the battle-ground of warring creeds. Its
+crown-shaped tower top is one of the familiar landmarks of Edinburgh.
+Within you may study to heart’s content the grim barrel vaulting and
+massive Norman piers and the tattered Scottish flags in the nave, but
+there is scope for many an agreeable thought outside if one conjures
+up the little luckenbooth shops that once clustered between its
+buttresses, and imagines Allan Ramsay in his funny nightcap selling
+wigs, or “Jingling Geordie” Heriot, of “The Fortunes of Nigel,”
+gossiping with his friend King James VI over his jewelry counter. Nor
+would you forget Jenny Geddes and how she seized her stool in disgust
+when the Dean undertook to introduce the ritual, and let it fly at the
+good man’s head with the sizzling invective, “Deil colic the wame o’
+ye! Would ye say mass i’ my lug!”
+
+Old Tron Kirk, farther on, is still an active feature of Edinburgh
+life, and particularly on New Year’s Eve when the crowds rally here
+as the old year dies. Beyond it the Canongate extends itself in a
+rambling, happy-go-lucky fashion, lined with curious timber-fronted
+houses with “turnpike” stairs. It is like sitting down to “Humphrey
+Clinker” once more; or better still, perhaps, to the poems of
+Fergusson; and we smile at thoughts of the scowling, early-risen
+housewives of other days who would
+
+                “Wi’ glowering eye
+    Their neighbours’ sma’est faults descry!”
+
+and fancy how the convivial revelers would foregather by night and
+
+                      “sit fu’ snug,
+    Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,
+            Or haddock lug.”
+
+But lingering along the Canongate is a negligible pleasure. There is
+nothing in the whole architectural world more jailish and pitiless
+than the gaunt Tolbooth and all its grim neighbors. It is as if the
+conception of anything suggestive of beauty or ornamentation had been
+harshly repressed, and ugliness and the most naked utility sternly
+insisted upon. One may, however, if he is interested in slums, pause
+a moment to look down through the railings of the South Bridge on the
+screaming peddlers and flaunting shame of bedraggled Cowgate, and
+behold a district which stands to Edinburgh in the relative position
+of Rivington Street to New York, or Petticoat Lane to London, or
+Montmartre to Paris.
+
+The end of the Canongate, a few steps farther on, debouches
+unexpectedly, and with a sudden unpreparedness for the stranger, on the
+great open square before Holyrood. There it stands, black and dismal;
+more like a prison than a palace! The Abbey ruins, in the rear, supply
+all the atmosphere of romance that the eye will get here. But the eye
+is better left as a secondary aid in comprehending Holyrood; history
+and imagination do the work. Cowering sorrowfully in its gloomy hollow,
+it has the look of a moody, forsaken thing brooding over a neglectful
+world. Its memories are of the dead. Its sole companionship is in the
+mosses and grassy aisles of the crumbling Abbey chapel, where lie the
+bones of Scottish royalty that ruled and reveled here its allotted time
+and left scarce a memory behind. It was here they slew Rizzio as he
+dined with Queen Mary; and perhaps that is romance enough.
+
+The fumes and cobwebs of murky tradition dissipate in the keen,
+vigorous air of Calton Hill. Breezes from over the level shore-sands
+of Leith taste sharp of salt and excite bracing thoughts of the sea.
+Like a map, the whole environ of Edinburgh lies exposed from the
+Pentlands to the Firth. There is the steepled city, rising over its
+ridges and dropping down its valleys like billows of a troubled ocean,
+and there, too, is the enveloping sweep of suburbs dotted with villas
+or cross-thatched with streets of workingmen’s cottages, and farther
+still the Meadows and their archery grounds, “the furzy hills of Braid”
+and their golf links, Blackford Hill whence “Marmion” and his bard
+looked down on “mine own romantic town,” and, on the southern horizon,
+the heathery Pentlands, low and shaggy, with the kine that graze over
+them low and shaggy too. To the northward, away beyond the cricket
+greens of Inverleith Park, the blue Firth sparkles in the offing,
+dotted with fleet steamers and the white spread sails of stately ships
+laying courses for the Baltic. In the distance, over Leith, looms the
+tall lighthouse of the Inchcape Rock that Southey made famous with a
+ballad. Beyond the west end of the city a wavy blue line marks the
+course seaward of the bustling little Water of Leith, where “David
+Balfour” kept tryst with “Alan Breck,” and many a sturdy little “brig”
+leaps across it as it hurries along, “brimmed,” wrote Stevenson, “like
+a cup with sunshine and the song of birds.” Still farther to the
+westward, where the old Queens Ferry Coach Road appears as a faint
+white tracing, within many “a mile of Edinborough Town,” thin vapors
+of smoke rise from the chimneys of white cottages on peasant greens by
+brooksides; and one knows that the rowans there are white with bloom
+and the meadows flecked with daisies, and that bees are droning in the
+foxglove and blackbirds singing in the hawthorn.
+
+Calton Hill itself scarcely improves on acquaintance, but loses rather.
+Its meagre scattering of monuments would barely excite a passing
+interest were it not for their conspicuous location and that suggestion
+of the Athenian Acropolis. A paltry array—a tall, ugly column to
+Nelson, a choragic monument like the one to Burns on a hillside near
+Holyrood, an old observatory with a brown tower and a new one with
+a colonnaded portico and a dome, and, most mentioned of all, the
+so-called “ruin” of the proposed national monument to the Scotch dead
+of Waterloo and the Peninsula, which got no farther than a row of
+columns and an entablature when funds failed and work stopped. Many
+a bitter shaft of scorn and mockery has this ill-starred undertaking
+pointed for the disparagers of Scotland. However, in its present
+condition it has done more than any other agency to stimulate the
+pleasant illusion of the “Modern Athens.” The hill itself is a favorite
+resort, lofty, and with a broad, rounded top. The eastern slopes are
+terraced and set with gardens, and the western and northern sides
+are steep verdant braes. One yields the palm for reckless daring to
+Bothwell; not every one would care to speed a horse down such a course
+even to win attention from eyes so bright and important as Queen Mary’s.
+
+It was on Calton Hill I had my first experience of the old school of
+Scotchmen, in the person of a dry and withered chip of Auld Reekie,
+combative, peppery, brusque and sententious, and abounding in that
+peculiar admixture of braggadocio and repression so characteristic
+of the class. He had evidently been nurtured from infancy on Allan
+Ramsay’s collection of Scotch proverbs, for he quoted them continually,
+giving the poet credit for their origin. He was sitting in the shade of
+Nelson’s column in shirt sleeves and cap, absorbed to all appearances
+in a copy of “The Scotsman,” though I suspect he had been regarding
+me for some while with quite as much curiosity as I now did him. He
+was a grim, self-contained old party, as dignified as the Lord Provost
+himself, with gray, shaggy eyebrows and a thin, wry mouth that gripped
+a cutty pipe; and he looked so much a part of the surroundings, so
+settled and weather-beaten, that one might almost have passed him over
+for some memorial carving or, at least, an “animated bust.” Him I
+beheld with vast inner delight and gingerly approached, giving “Good
+day” with all the cordiality in the world. The reward was a curt nod
+and a keen scrutiny from a pair of hard and twinkling blue eyes that
+had an appearance under the grizzled brows of stars in a frosty sky.
+I observed upon the fineness of the day; he opined “There had been
+waur, no doot.” I noted what a capital spot it was for a quiet smoke;
+he allowed I might “gang far an’ find nane better.” Here I made proffer
+of a cigar and, presumably, with acceptable humility, for he took it
+with an “Ah, weel, I dinna mind,” of gloomy resignation—and so we got
+things going.
+
+The conversation that followed I venture to give in some detail as
+illustrating, possibly, the peculiarities of a type to be encountered
+on every Edinburgh street corner—whimsical, conservative, witty,
+cautious in opinion, and surcharged with local pride.
+
+“A man can take life pleasantly here,” said I, when we had lighted up.
+
+“Aye, aye,” said he; “even a hard-workin’ one like mysel’, as Gude
+kens. But a bit smoke frae ane an’ twa o’ the day hurts naebody, I’m
+thinkin’; an’ auld Allan Ramsay was richt eneuch, ‘Light burdens break
+nae banes.’”
+
+“You will never be leaving Edinburgh, I’ll warrant.”
+
+“Na, na. Ye’ll have heard tell the sayin’, ‘Remove an auld tree an’ it
+will wither.’”
+
+“There’s more money to be made elsewhere, perhaps.”
+
+“I’m no so sure o’ that. Forbye, ‘Little gear the less care.’”
+
+“One wouldn’t find a handsomer city than this, at all events.”
+
+“Aweel, aweel, a’body kens that. Ye’ll no so vera frequently see the
+bate o’ it, I’m thinkin’. Them that should ken the best say sae.”
+
+“How many people are there here, sir?”
+
+“Mare than three hunner an’ fifty thoosan’, I’m telt.”
+
+“No more? It is small for its fame. Why, Glasgow must be three times as
+large,” I ventured, resolved to stir him up a little.
+
+“Glesgie, is it! Think shame o’ yersel’, mon, to say the same! A
+grippie carlin, Glesgie! Waur than the auld wife o’ the sayin’, ‘She’ll
+keep her ain side o’ the hoose, and gang up an’ doon in yours.’ Ye
+canna nay-say me there. Gae wa’ wi’ ye!”
+
+“But you must admit it is a great port. The receipts are enormous, I’m
+told.”
+
+“Aye, an’ it’s muckle ye’ll be telt ye’ll never read in the Guid Buik!
+Port, are ye sayin’? Hae ye na thought o’ Leith? Or the bonny sands an’
+gardens o’ Portobello? Or Granton, forbye, wi’ the three braw piers
+o’ the Duke o’ Buccleuch? Ye’ll no be kennin’ they’re a’ a part o’
+Ed’nboro, maybe.”
+
+“But how about the ship-building on the Clyde?”
+
+“An’ what wad ye make o’ that? How ony mon in his senses could gang to
+think sic jowkery-packery wi’ the gran’ brewin’ ayont the Coogait is
+mair than ever I could win to understan’. It’s by-ordinar, fair! An’
+dinna loup to deecesions frae the claver an’ lees aboot muckle things.
+’Twas Allan Ramsay himsel’ said, ‘Mony ane opens their pack an’ sells
+nae wares.’ It’s unco strange that a body should tak nae notice o’ the
+learnin,’ an’ the gran’ courts, an’ the three hunner congregeetions,
+an’ a’ the bonny kirks we hae in Ed’nboro, but must ever be spairin’
+o’ the siller. Do ye think, noo, it’s sae vera wonderful to ‘Put twa
+pennies in a purse, an’ see them creep thegither’? Glesgie may ken a’
+sic-like gear, I’m nae sayin’; but there’s no sae muckle worth in that,
+as ye’ll be findin’ oot, though ye read in the books til the morn’s
+mornin’. It’s a fair disgrace to hae sic thochts. Mon can sae nae mair.”
+
+“At any rate, there’s a fine university there.”
+
+“It’s easy sayin’ sae. Muckle service is it! Gude kens a’ they learn
+there! Gin it’s cooleges ye’ll be admirin’, maybe ye’ll no be so vera
+well acquaint wi’ our ain toun? There’s nane in a’ Glesgie like the ane
+ye see the day. Mon, it’s fair dementit ye’ll be.”
+
+It took time and diplomacy and many a round compliment on Edinburgh to
+bring him out of his sulk; but eventually he yielded.
+
+“Aye,” said he, “I believe ye’ll be in the richt the noo. It’s gran’ up
+here, dinna misdoot it. Mony’s the braw sicht to be had, that’s a fac’,
+an’ I ken them a’ like the back o’ my hand. Sin lang afore yon trees
+were plantit, mare than ane fine dander hae I taen mysel’, bonny simmer
+days, lang miles o’er the heather. Ye’ll believe me, I’d gang hame and
+sleep soun’. It’s na sae pleesant, maybe, in winter, wi’ the dour haars
+an’ the fog an’ the east winds. But I aye like it fine in simmer,
+wi’ a bit nip o’ wind betimes an’ then fair again. At the gloaming
+it’s quaiet an’ cauller, and then aiblins I bide a blink an’ hae a
+bit puff o’ my cutty, an’ syne I’ll gang to my bed wi’ an easy hairt.
+But, wheesht, mon! It’ll be twa o’ the day by the noo, I’m thinkin’?
+Is it so! Be gude to us! Weel, weel, I’ll gang my gait. I maunna be
+late to the wark; it’s a fearsome example to the laddies. ‘A scabbed
+sheep,’ says auld Allan, ‘smites the hale hirsel’.’ Guid day to ye; an’
+keep awa’ frae Glesgie.” And with many a sigh and rheumatic hitch he
+shuffled off to the steps.
+
+The old man was right. “Frae ane an’ twa o’ the day” a blither or
+more inspiring spot than Calton Hill would be hard to find. What more
+could possibly be desired, with a city so fair and famous at one’s
+feet and the air tonic with the sweetness of the heather and the brine
+of the sea! Fancy plays an amiable rôle and adds to one’s contentment
+with shadowy illusions of the Canongate of bygone days acclaiming
+Scotland’s kings and queens as they ride forth in pomp and pageantry,
+with trains of fierce clansmen from the furtherest Highlands, with
+pibrochs screaming, bonnets dancing, and axes and claymores rattling.
+And Montrose may pass with his Graham Cavaliers, or Argyle leading the
+Campbells of the Covenant. With our eyes on Holyrood, pathetic visions
+float before us of fair Mary of many sorrows, over whose gilded gloom
+the poets have loved to linger. One moment she looms in the heroic
+martyrdom conceived by Schiller, and the next we see her as Swinburne
+did in “Chastelard,” with
+
+                                              “lips
+    Curled over, red and sweet; and the soft space
+    Of carven brows, and splendor of great throat
+    Swayed lily-wise.”
+
+Welcome apparitions of later days throng about us on the hill: Ramsay
+and his “Gentle Shepherd,” young Fergusson and his wild companions,
+Burns with his jovial cronies, the scholarly Jeffrey, the learned
+Hume, the inspired Sir Walter, the delightful revelers of the “Noctes
+Ambrosianæ,” the gentle Lady Nairne, the eager, brilliant Stevenson,
+and Dr. Brown with the faithful “Rab” and Ollivant with “Bob, Son of
+Battle.” The crisp sunshine lies golden on Princes Street and all
+her flowered terraces; it glints the grim redoubts of the Castle and
+lingers on the crooked gables of High Street. From the brown heather of
+the Pentlands to the distant sparkle of the Firth stretches a vigorous
+and comely land. What man so callous as to feel no joy in “Scotia’s
+Darling Seat”!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ANTWERP
+
+2 P.M. TO 3 P.M.
+
+
+A table in the lively little Café de la Terrasse, up on the broad stone
+_promenoir_ overhanging the Antwerp docks, is one place in a thousand
+for the man who is inclined toward any such unusual combination as a
+maximum of twentieth-century business activity in a setting of the
+Middle Ages. He is fortunate in locality and happy in surroundings. A
+Parisian waiter removes the remains of his light luncheon of a salad
+of Belgian greens fresh this morning from a trim truck garden beyond
+the ramparts, refills the thin tumbler to the taste of the guest with
+foaming local Orge or light Brussels Faro or the bitter product of
+Ghent or the flat, insipid stuff they boast about at Louvain, and
+supplies a light for an excellent cigar made here in Antwerp of the
+best growth of Havana. Supposing it to be two o’clock of the usual
+mottled, doubtful afternoon,—for Antwerp’s weather, like Antwerp’s
+history, is mingled sunshine and shadows,—the loiterer may look out
+at his ease on a notable and fascinating panorama. Beneath him and to
+either side extend miles of massive docks of ponderous masonry, upon
+and about which swarms an ant-like multitude of nimble and active
+longshoremen plying a network of ropes and tackle, and directing the
+labors of vast, writhing derricks that toil like a mechanical Israel
+in bondage. Snuggling close to the grim granite walls are merchant
+mammoths from the ends of the earth, and into these, with the ease of
+a man stooping for a pin, gigantic steel arms sweep tons of casks and
+bales that they have lightly plucked out of long wharf trains lying
+alongside. There is a prodigious bustling of porters in long blue
+blouses, shouts and cries from the riverful of shipping, trampling
+of thousands of hobnailed shoes, and an incessant clatter of the
+wooden sabots of little Antwerp boys in peaked caps and baggy blue
+trousers and of little Antwerp girls in bright skirts and curious white
+headdress.
+
+This sort of thing is proceeding for miles up and down the river front,
+and all through the intricate series of locks and _bassins_ and canals
+that quadruple the wharfage of this rejuvenated old Flemish city. They
+are receiving whole argosies of raw material in the shape of hides,
+tobacco, and textiles, and are sending away fortunes in cut diamonds,
+delicate laces, linens, beer, sugar, and innumerable clever products
+of human hands from fragile glass to ponderous machinery. And they do
+it with more ease and, it seems necessary to add, with less profanity
+than any other port of Europe. What, then, could have possessed the
+genial Eugene Field to pass along that ancient slander on the excellent
+burghers of Flanders?
+
+    “At any rate, as I grieve to state,
+      Since these soldiers vented their danders,
+    Conjectures obtain that for language profane,
+      There is no such place as Flanders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    This is the kind of talk you’ll find
+      If ever you go to Flanders.”
+
+While I should not wish to take such extreme ground as that assumed, in
+another connection, by a New York police inspector, when he observed
+that “every one of them facts has been verified to be absolutely
+untrue,” still I must say that, as far as I could notice, there is
+nothing notable about the Flemish oath as employed to-day. Indeed, it
+is more than likely that one could pass a long and pleasant evening
+loitering among the _tavernes_ and recreation haunts of the Belgian
+soldier and civilian and come across nothing more vocally spirited
+than robust guffaws, possibly punctuated discreetly, or heavy fists
+thundering the time as a couple of comrades scrape over the sanded
+floor in the contagious rhythm of that venerable and favorite waltz of
+the Netherlands,—
+
+    “Rosa, willen wy dansen?
+    Danst Rosa; danst Rosa.
+    Rosa, willen wy dansen?
+    Danst Rosa zoet!”
+
+On the other hand, if, with this much of an excuse, a stranger should
+go exploring Antwerp between two and three o’clock in quest of
+“verkoop men dranken” signs, he would be quite otherwise repaid in
+the discovery of charming huddled and crooked streets and a wealth
+of architectural quaintness and beauty. He would have no difficulty
+in finding _tavernes_ and drinking-places, particularly along the
+river front, where they abound. As he passed them he would encounter
+robust whiffs of acrid and penetrating odors with tar and fish in the
+ascendancy, and catch glimpses of a wooden-shod peasantry fraternizing
+with evil-eyed “water-rats” and devouring vast quantities of salmon and
+sauerkraut washed down with ale and white beer. There is no charge now,
+as once there was, for noise made by patrons. The silk-fingered gentry
+overreached themselves here, for when, a number of years ago, they had
+carried the robbing of foreign sailors to the point of international
+notoriety, the authorities took a hand and devised a system of payment
+for Jack ashore; then the American and English ministers and consuls
+established and made popular the Sailors’ Bethel on the quay, with its
+clean and attractive reading- and amusement-rooms, and the Sailors’
+Home on Canal de l’Ancre, where, for fifty-five cents a day, Jack can
+have a neat little room to himself and four excellent meals in the
+bargain. For these reasons among others, a visitor, even by night,
+finds much less of noise and revelry than he had anticipated, and
+beholds the thirsty Antwerpian content himself with a final “nip” at
+an _estaminet_ or even make shift of a “nightcap” of mineral water
+or black coffee at one or another of the city’s innumerable cafés. In
+these he will himself be welcome to read the news of the day in the
+columns of “Le Précurseur” or “De Nieuwe Gazet,” or, better still,
+in the venerable “Gazet van Gent,” one of the oldest of existing
+newspapers, with nearly two hundred and fifty years of publication
+behind it. The real drinking will have been in progress where the
+out-of-town people have been dining _à prix fixe_, and clinking their
+burgundy and claret glasses at the great hotels on the Quai Van Dyck,
+the Place de Meir, or the Place Verte. The palm should really go to
+the amusement seekers of the latter little square; for nothing this
+side the capacity of an archery club at a July kermess can compare with
+the thirst of the music lovers who throng the tables on the sidewalks
+before the restaurants and cafés of jolly Place Verte when the band
+is playing, on balmy summer evenings. Instead of dissipation, the
+man who explores Antwerp makes constant discovery of unanticipated
+delights. He observes about him in the surprising little streets of
+the old section an amazing collection of absurd roofs slanting steeply
+up for several stories, pierced with owl-like, staring, round windows;
+house fronts by the hundreds with denticulated gables stepping upward
+like staircases toward the sky; and pots of flowers and immaculate
+muslin curtains in tiny doll-house windows peering out from the most
+unexpected and impossible places away up among the eaves and chimneys.
+He will catch an occasional glimpse of massive old four-poster beds
+with green curtains and yellow lace valances; of shining oak chests,
+and high-back chairs, and brown dining-rooms wainscoted in polished oak
+and most inviting with ponderous side-boards set with Delft platters
+and gleaming copper and pewter pieces. From time to time he will see
+large, cool living-rooms in which the father enjoys his paper and
+meerschaum pipe, while the placid-faced mother employs herself with
+lace or embroidery and the fair-haired daughter at the piano tells how
+
+    “Ik zag Cecilia komen
+    Langs eenen waterkant,
+    Ik zag Cecilia komen
+    Mit bloemen in haer hand.”
+
+As I previously observed, there is no better place for a preliminary
+impression of Antwerp than along the docks. There one acquires some
+adequate idea of the amazing extent of its industrial operations and
+enjoys, at the same time, an extraordinary panorama of a river choked
+with shipping in the immediate foreground, and, on the opposite bank,
+the sombre redoubts of Tête de Flandre and Fort Isabelle keeping watch
+and ward over the flat little farms that extend seaward in fields of
+pale-green corn and barley. For any one who has done the proper amount
+of preparatory reading on Antwerp, it will inspire stirring thoughts
+of the musical, artistic, and martial career of this rare old Flemish
+town.
+
+If the visitor be a lover of music—of Wagner’s music—the surrounding
+uproar and confusion will shortly fade into a charming reverie as he
+gazes far down the glittering zigzag of the Scheldt and some distant
+glimmer will take the form of the swan-boat of Lohengrin with the Grail
+knight leaning on his shining shield. The docks and quays will have
+disappeared, and in their place will once more lie the old low meadows,
+and, under the Oak of Justice, King Henry the Fowler will take seat
+on his throne with the nobles of Brabant ranged about him. Fair Elsa,
+charged with fratricide, moves slowly forward, sustained by her dream
+of a champion who is to come to her defense; and the heralds pace off
+the lists and appeal to the four quarters in the sonorous chant,—
+
+    “Wer hier im Gotteskampf zu streiten kam
+    Für Elsa von Brabant, der trete vor.”
+
+And suddenly the peasants by the water’s edge cry out in amazement
+and point down the reaches of the river, and there comes glittering
+Lohengrin in the “shining armor” of Elsa’s dream. The champion steps
+ashore and gives no heed to the awe-hushed company until he has
+sung to his feathered steed what now every child in Germany could
+sing with him, “Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan.” And then the
+contest rages and the false Frederick falls, and the royal cortège
+retires to the neighboring old fortress of the Steen. All night the
+treacherous Ortrud and her defeated Frederick plot by the steps of
+yonder cathedral, and there, in the morning, Lohengrin weds Elsa and
+the immortal Wedding March welcomes the “faithful and true” back to
+their fortress home. The black night of mistrust and carnage follows,
+and when day dawns Lohengrin bids farewell to his suspicious bride in
+these green Scheldt meadows and sails sadly away in his resplendent
+boat drawn by the dove of the Grail.
+
+On the other hand, if the visitor has a mind for history, he may
+scorn the pretty Grail story and look with stern eyes on this Scheldt
+and the battle-scarred city beside it, mindful of the deeds of blood
+and fire that fill the hypnotic pages of Schiller, Prescott, and
+Motley. The monk of St. Gall could have appropriately dedicated to the
+war-ravaged Antwerp of those days his solemn antiphonal “media vita
+in morte sumus.” The grim, turreted Steen, just at hand, recalls the
+bloody reign of Alva and how he condemned a whole people to death in an
+order of three lines. In its present rôle of museum it houses hundreds
+of implements of torture that once were drenched in the blood of the
+heroic burghers of Antwerp. Not all the horrors of the “Spanish Fury,”
+when eight thousand citizens of this town were butchered in three days,
+nor the stirring memory of the “French Fury,” with Antwerp triumphant,
+can dim the glory of the heroic resistance the “Sea Beggars” made to
+the advance of the Duke of Parma up the Scheldt.
+
+[Illustration: ANTWERP, FROM THE SCHELDT]
+
+From the cathedral tower one may see the little towns of Calloo and
+Oordam, on either bank of the river; it was between them that Parma
+built his bridge to obstruct navigation, and against it the men of
+Antwerp sent their famous fire-ships to open up a passage for the
+Zeelander allies. Gianibelli, who devised them, and whom Schiller
+styled “the Archimedes of Antwerp,” builded better than he knew, for
+with one ship he destroyed a thousand Spaniards and heaped up their
+defenses into a labyrinth of ruin. Could Antwerp have risen then above
+the clash of factions, there would have been no need later to tear down
+the dikes and present the strange spectacle of ships sailing over the
+land, and their story might have been as triumphant as Holland’s, and a
+united Netherlands have issued from those long wars with Spain.
+
+Here where the visitor takes his afternoon ease many a brave pageant
+foregathered in the troubled, olden days. In the magic pages of old Van
+Meteren’s chronicles we see them pass again: Cold, gloomy, treacherous
+Philip stepping from his golden barge to walk under triumphal arches
+on a carpet of strewn roses, surrounded by magistrates and burghers
+splendid in ruffs and cramoisy velvet; later on, the Regent, Margaret
+of Parma, strident and gouty, whom Prescott has called “a man in
+petticoats”; and then the bloodthirsty Alva; then the dashing “Sword
+of Lepanto,” the brilliant and romantic Don John of Austria; next,
+the atrocious Requesens; and, last of all, the revengeful Alexander
+of Parma. Hopeful, stolid, impassive Antwerp, ever the sheep for the
+shearers, ever believing that at last the worst was over, rejoices in
+her welcome to each as though the millennium had finally dawned on all
+her troubles and sets cressets to blazing in the cathedral tower and
+roasts whole oxen in the public squares.
+
+The scream of a river siren will arouse the visitor from the Past
+to the Present, and, with a sigh, he will saunter forth to see the
+places that cannot come to him. He will leave with regret this busy,
+fascinating river—“the lazy Scheldt” that Goldsmith loved. Excited
+little tugs are bustling busily about, queer-coated dock-hands struggle
+mightily with their mammoth burdens, and ships of every shape and
+pattern throng the roadstead before him. The sharp and trim Yankee
+sloop, the ponderous German tramp, the fastidious British freighter,
+the clean-cut ocean liner, and, best of all, the round-sterned,
+wallowing Dutch craft, green of hull and yellow of sail,—all are here,
+and, he can think, for his especial diversion. A canal barge crawls
+laboriously by, and in that floating home which she seldom cares to
+leave, a much-be-petticoated mother of Flanders busies herself with her
+many children and looks after the care of her tiny house;—and looks
+after it well, as you may see by the spotless little curtains that
+flutter in the windows and the bright pots of geraniums that stand on
+the sills. One recalls the keen delight this singular craft afforded
+Robert Louis Stevenson at the time he made his charming “Inland Voyage”
+from Antwerp. Quoth he: “Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise,
+a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread
+its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and
+the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green
+corn-lands; the most picturesque of things amphibious.... There should
+be many contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel
+and to stay at home.”
+
+Along the front there is also opportunity to expend a couple of francs
+to advantage for a ticket on the comfortable little steamer that is
+just impatiently casting off from the _embarcadère_, and to go sailing
+with her on an hour’s voyage up the river to Tamise to view the
+shipping at greater length, to see the merchants’ villas at Hoboken,
+and finally the famous picture of the Holy Family at the journey’s end.
+Otherwise the visitor may take a parting look up the Quay van Dyck and
+the Quay Jordaens, examine once more the striking Porte de l’Escaut
+that Rubens decorated, and so turn a reluctant back on the bright life
+of the river to thread a crooked street or two, cobbled and tortuous,
+and issue forth on the Grand Place before the immense, fantastic Hôtel
+de Ville.
+
+In the drowsy early afternoon this quaint and curious old city hall
+wears a most friendly and reposeful air. To one who has never before
+seen any of these extraordinary Old-World buildings such a one as
+this will move such incredulity as mastered the countryman at the
+first sight of a giraffe;—“Shucks!” said he when he had looked
+it all over, “there never was such an animal!” Fancy a rambling,
+picture-book of a structure a hundred yards long, made up of the
+oddest combination of architectural orders—massive pillars for the
+first story, Doric arcades for the second, Ionic for the third, and
+last of all, an abbreviated colonnade supporting a steep, tent-like,
+gable-pierced roof! As though some touch of the whimsical might even
+so have been neglected, behold a pompous central tower, decorated to
+suffocation, arched of window and graven of column, rearing itself
+in three diminishing, denticulated stories above the long, sloping
+roof, until the singular, box-like ornaments on the very tiptop appear
+tiny Greek tombs of a cloud-hung Acropolis. The statues of Wisdom and
+Justice could pass for Æschylus and Sophocles, and the Holy Virgin
+on the summit might very well be Athena. The friendly air to which I
+have referred extends even to these statues, who have the appearance
+of shouting down to you to come in out of the heat and have a look
+at the great stairway of colored marbles and rest awhile before the
+splendid chimney-piece of delicately carved black-and-white stone in
+the elaborate Salle des Mariages. Subtle matchmakers, those statues!
+And, indeed, if Antwerp is the first steamer-stop of the visitor, he
+may well be pardoned for reveling in this Hôtel de Ville as something
+that for picturesque beauty he may not hope to better elsewhere. And
+yet that would only be because he had not seen the glorious one at
+Brussels, or the grim and huddled caprice at Mechlin, or the incredible
+Halle aux Draps at Ypres, or the amazing Rabot Gate or Watermen’s Guild
+House of Ghent. And even these will fall back into the commonplace
+once he has drifted along the Quai du Rosaire of drowsy old Bruges and
+been steeped in picturesqueness and color that is beyond any man’s
+describing.
+
+No one who cares for structural quaintness and originality can fail
+to find especial delight in the surroundings of this venerable
+Grand Place. Along one entire side, like prize competitors in an
+architectural fancy ball, shoulder to shoulder, stiff and precise,
+range the old Halls of the Guilds. The Archers, the Coopers, the
+Tailors, the Carpenters, and all the others of that most unusual
+alignment, present themselves in full regalia of characteristic
+ornament and design. As though in keeping with their ancient traditions
+of stout rivalry, there is a very real air of vying between themselves
+for some coveted palm for fantastic bizarreness; and all the while with
+a solemn innocence of being at all grotesque or unusual. One could
+laugh at their naïve unconsciousness of the prodigious show they make,
+with sculptures and adornments of bygone days and a combined violent
+sky-line slashed with long eaves and bitten out in serrated gable ends.
+But there is little of merriment and very much of reverence in the
+thoughts they excite of worthy pride in skill of craftsmanship and the
+glory their masters brought to this city in the sixteenth century in
+winning from Venice the industrial supremacy of the world. In those
+days there were no poor in all Antwerp and every child could read and
+write at least two languages, and the Counts of Flanders were more
+powerful than half the kings of Europe.
+
+But the Grand Place has more to show than the guild halls. The apogee
+of the whimsical and fantastic has been attained in the choppy sea of
+red-tiled roof-tops that eddies above this huddled neighborhood. Grim
+old dormered veterans, queer and chimerical, palsied and askew, have
+here held their own stoutly through the centuries. They have echoed
+back the shouts of the crusaders, the triumphal cannon of Spanish
+royalty, and the free-hearted welcomes to foreign princes come to curry
+favor with the Flemish merchant rulers of the world. They have turned
+gray with the groans of their nobles writhing under the Inquisition
+and rosy with approval of the adroit and courageous William of Nassau.
+From their antique windows have leaned the burgomasters of Rubens and
+the cavaliers of Velasquez, brave in ruffs and beards; and out of the
+most hidden nests of their eaves the wan and pallid faces of their
+hunted sons have been raised to watch the approach of the ruthless
+soldiery of Requesens and Parma. These old roofs look down to-day on a
+rich and happy people whose skill and tireless industry have reared a
+commercial fabric that astonishes the world.
+
+At this afternoon hour the Grand Place betrays little of its
+early-morning activity, when it is thronged with the overflowing stands
+of busy marketmen in baggy trousers, and banks of rich colors of the
+flower-women in immaculate linen headdress proffering the choice output
+of their scrupulously tilled farms. Scarcely less picturesque are
+these oddly garbed country-folk than the famous fish-venders over at
+Ostend, and certainly they are a more fragrant people to shop among. A
+curious and colorful picture they present with the long lines of gayly
+painted dog-carts blazing with peonies and geraniums. Huddled around
+the great statue of Brabo they quite throw into limbo the Daughters
+of the Scheldt that are disporting in bronze on the pedestal. Brabo
+himself, Antwerp’s Jack-the-Giant-Killer, pauses on high in the act of
+hurling away the severed hand of the vanquished Antigonus as though
+he could see no unoccupied spot to throw it in. Should he let go at
+random, and hit house Number 4, he could surely expect to be hauled
+down forthwith, for the great Van Dyck was born there, and Antwerp is
+nothing if not reverent of the memory of her glorious sons of Art. And
+Brabo cannot afford to take too many chances with the security of his
+own position, for he himself has a rival; Napoleon the Great was really
+a greater champion of Flanders than he, and overthrew a worse enemy
+of Antwerp’s than the fabled Antigonus when he raised the embargo on
+the Scheldt, that had existed for a century and a half under the terms
+of the outrageous Treaty of Westphalia, until scarcely a rowboat would
+venture over the silt-choked mouth of the river, and only then to find
+the famous capital a forsaken village of empty streets and abandoned
+factories. The dredging of the channel, the expenditure of millions in
+construction of wharves and quays, and the restoration of the city to
+its high place in the commercial world was a greater and more difficult
+work than Brabo’s.
+
+The varied and vivid life of Antwerp unfolds itself strikingly in the
+early afternoon to one who exchanges the sleepy, mediæval Grand Place
+for the broad, curving, crowded boulevard of the popular Place de Meir.
+It was just such clean and handsome streets as this that inspired John
+Evelyn to write so delightedly of Antwerp two hundred and fifty years
+ago, describing them in his famous “Diary” as “fair and noble, clean,
+well-paved, and sweet to admiration.” Indeed, everything seemed to
+have charmed Evelyn here, as witness his inclusive approval, “Nor did
+I ever observe a more quiet, clean, elegantly built, and civil place
+than this magnificent and famous city of Antwerp.” Rubens, the name of
+names in Flanders, was then too recently dead to have come into the
+fullness of his fame; whereas to-day one thinks of him continually here
+and likes nothing better than the many opportunities to study him in
+the completeness of his wonderful career—“the greatest master,” said
+Sir Joshua Reynolds, “in the mechanical part of the art, that ever
+exercised a pencil.” Even trivial associations of his activity are
+cherished; as we find them, for instance, in the little woodcut designs
+he made for his famous friend, Christopher Plantin, the greatest
+printer of the era, and which one handles reverently in the old Plantin
+house in the Marché du Vendredi—that picture-book of a house, where
+corbel-carved ceiling-beams overhang antique presses, types, and
+mallets, and great windows of tiny leaded panes let in a flood of
+light from the rarest and mellowest old courtyard in the whole of the
+Netherlands.
+
+The Place de Meir is Antwerp’s Broadway; and an afternoon stroll
+along it affords a constantly changing view of stately public and
+private buildings, no less attractive to the average man than those
+“apple-green wineshops, garlanded in vines” that delighted Théophile
+Gautier on the river front. Little corner shrines, so numerous in this
+city, shelter saints of tinsel and gilt and receive the reverence of
+a population that has four hundred Catholics to every Protestant. One
+must necessarily delight in a street whose houses are all of delicately
+colored brick, with stone trimmings carved to a nicety and shutters
+painted in softest greens. The imposing Royal Palace is graceful and
+beautiful, but human interest goes out to the stone-garlanded house
+across the way,—old Number 54,—where Rubens was born and where he
+lived so many years and took so much pleasure in making beautiful for
+his parents. On either hand one sees solid residences of the most
+generous proportions, and all in tints of pink and gray, and busy
+hotels with red-faced porters hurrying about in long blouses. Picture
+stores and bookshops scrupulously stocked with religious volumes
+beguile lingering inspection. There are establishments on every hand
+for the sale of ecclesiastical paraphernalia, with windows hung with
+confirmation wreaths, crucifixes, rosaries, and what-not. Occasionally,
+even here, one discovers, crushed in between more consequential
+businesses, the celebrated little gingerbread-shops of which so much
+amused notice has been taken. Restaurants and cafés abound. One sees
+them on every hand, with their characteristic overflow of tables
+and chairs on the sidewalk, always thronged, both inside and out,
+with jolly, chattering patrons and gleaming in sideboard and shelf
+with highly polished vessels of brass and pewter. Here and there one
+passes the confectionery shops, called _pâtisseries_, where ices,
+mild liqueurs, and mineral waters refresh a thriving trade. Stevenson
+found no relish for Flemish food, pronouncing it “of a nondescript,
+occasional character.” He complained that the Belgians do not go at
+eating with proper thoroughness, but “peck and trifle with viands all
+day long in an amateur spirit.” “All day long” is apt enough, for
+Antwerp’s restaurants and cafés are always thronged.
+
+These ruddy-faced and placid Belgians are a very serene and contented
+people. It is pleasant and even restful to watch them; they go
+about the affairs of life with such an absence of fret and fever.
+Spanish-appearing ladies float gracefully past in silk mantillas;
+priests by the hundreds shuffle along leisurely in picturesque hats and
+gowns; the portly merchant, on his way at this hour to the _moresque_,
+many-columned Bourse, proceeds in like deliberate and unhurried
+fashion. Street venders, in peaked caps and voluminous trousers,
+approach you with calm deliberation and retire unruffled at your
+dismissal. On every sunny corner military men by the score “loafe and
+invite their souls.” Tradesmen in the shops and cabmen in the open go
+about their business as though it were a matter of infinite leisure.
+Even the day laborers in the streets, whose huge sabots stand in long
+rows by the curb, survey life tranquilly; why worry when a good pair
+of wooden shoes costs less than a dollar and will last for five or six
+years?
+
+The snatches of conversation one catches betray the confusion of
+tongues inseparable from a nation of whom one half cannot understand
+the other, and whose cousins, once or twice removed, are of foreign
+speech to either. The Dutch spoken in the Scheldt country is said to
+be as bewildering to a German, as is the French the Walloons employ
+in the valley of the Meuse to a Parisian. But although the Flemish
+outnumber their fellow countrymen of Wallonia two to one, still French
+is the tongue of the court, the sciences, and all the educated and
+upper circles. It is like Austria-Hungary all over again. And French
+continues steadily to gain ground in spite of the utmost efforts of the
+enthusiasts behind the new “Flemish Movement.” One sees both classes on
+the Place de Meir,—the stolid, light-haired man of Flanders and the
+nervous, swarthy Walloon. The beauty of the blue-eyed, _belle Flamande_
+is in happy contrast with that of the slender, dark-eyed _Wallonne_,
+and their poets have exhausted themselves in efforts to do justice to
+either side of so delicate and distracting a dilemma. Our grandmothers
+heard much of the charms of _La Flamande_ when Lortzing’s melodious
+“Czaar und Zimmermann” was so popular, seventy-five years ago:—
+
+    “Adieu, ma jolie Flamande,
+    Que je quitte malgré moi!
+    J’en aurai la de demand,
+    J’ai de l’amitié pour toi.”
+
+The complexion of the life on the Place de Meir changes with the hours.
+Between two and three o’clock we find it disposed to adapt itself as
+closely as possible along lines of personal comfort. By five it will be
+lively with carriages and automobiles bound for the driving in the prim
+little Pépinière, or the bird-thronged Zoölogical gardens, or around
+the lake in the central park, with a turn up the fashionable Rue Carnot
+to the stately boulevards of the new and exclusive Borgerhout section.
+At that hour one may count confidently upon seeing every uniform of the
+garrison among the crowds of officers who turn out to have a part in
+the beauty show. On the other hand, if it were early morning—_very_
+early morning—and the sun were still fighting its way through the
+mists and vapors of the Scheldt, the Place de Meir would resound with
+rattling little carts by the hundreds, bearing great milk cans of
+glittering, polished brass packed in straw, by whose sides patient,
+placid-faced women would trudge along in quaint thimble-bonnets, with
+plaid shawls crossed and belted above voluminous skirts and their
+feet set securely in the clumsy wooden sabots of the Fatherland.
+Market gardeners in linen smocks and gray worsted stockings would be
+bringing Antwerp its breakfast in carts only a little larger than the
+milk-women’s, and butcher boys would be scurrying by with meat trays
+on their heads or suspended from yokes across their shoulders. And all
+the echoes of the city would be forced into feverish activity to answer
+the wild clamor of the barking and fighting dogs, shaggy and strong,
+that draw all these picturesque little wagons. Assuredly there are few
+sights in Antwerp so impressive to the stranger as this substitution of
+dog for horse. It has been celebrated in prose and verse, with Ouida
+possibly carrying off the palm with her canine _vie intime_, “A Dog of
+Flanders.”
+
+As the loiterer continues his afternoon stroll to the large and
+central Place de Commune, crosses into the chain of transverse
+boulevards, and returns riverward to that choicest spot of all, the
+tree-shaded, memory-haunted Place Verte, he is bound to reflect upon
+the vast changes that Antwerp, above all other Continental cities,
+has experienced in the last quarter-century. He will marvel, too,
+that Robert Bell should have lamented in his charming “Wayside
+Pictures” the paucity of gay life here and particularly the lack of
+theatrical entertainment. It may have been so when Bell wrote, fifty
+years ago, but it is decidedly otherwise to-day. So far as theatres
+go, they simply abound; nor could city streets be gayer than these,
+thronged with a merry, happy people and bright with the uniforms of
+artillery-men and fortress engineers, grenadiers of the line and the
+dashing _chasseurs-à-cheval_. Every hotel and café has its orchestra;
+and in the early evening practically every square of the city has its
+concert by a band from a regiment or guild. There is no suburb, they
+say, but has its own band or orchestra, or both. Indeed, Antwerp is
+nearly as music-mad as art-mad.
+
+The shady aisles of poplars in the cozy Place Verte, the perfumes and
+peaceful sounds, the music of the cathedral bells, the homelike hotels
+and cafés and the drowsy, nodding Old-World house-fronts combine to
+produce a sense of comfort and satisfaction peculiar to this favored
+little square. There is, besides, a special and impressive feeling
+of something like the personal presence of the great Rubens; partly,
+perhaps, from the fact that the city’s chief statue of him, a lifelike
+bronze of heroic size, stands at the centre of the Place. Twice the
+normal stature of man it is, and its pedestal is five times as high as
+one’s head, and the great palette, book, and scrolls are all of more
+generous proportions than such things actually ever are;—but there
+seems nothing at all disproportionate in that, considering what he
+was and what the average man is. The memory of one who could paint a
+masterpiece in a day, who stood head and shoulders above every living
+artist of his time, and whose work has inspired and delighted mankind
+for three hundred years, becomes, like all great objects, positively
+prodigious from actual proximity. Such is the inevitable attitude
+towards Rubens when one touches the things he touched, walks the
+streets of the city where he was born, lived, and lies buried, where
+he wrought his greatest artistic triumphs, and where his finest work
+is still preserved and reverenced. The most admired cathedral in the
+whole of the Netherlands rises out of the fluttering tree-tops of the
+square, and the greatest treasures it contains are the product of this
+man’s genius. Every one feels the Rubens influence in the Place Verte;
+Eugène Fromentin, fresh from his pictorial triumphs of Algerian life,
+observed in “Les Maîtres d’Autrefois”: “Our imagination becomes excited
+more than usual when, in the centre of Place Verte, we see the statue
+of Rubens and further on, the old basilica where are preserved the
+triptychs which, humanly speaking, have consecrated it.” Such are the
+privileged emotions of the wise and fortunate visitors who pitch their
+passing tent in this fair and favored nook.
+
+Reflections over Rubens naturally arouse thoughts of the many sons
+of Flanders who won preëminence in the domain of art. No other
+city, inexplicable as it is, has, in modern times, seen so large a
+proportion of its citizens achieve the loftiest heights of fame in this
+glorious activity; nor has any other honored art so unaffectedly in
+memorializing their triumphs. In Antwerp there are scores of streets
+and squares, and even quays, named after its artists. There are also
+fine statues to Rubens, Van Dyck, David Teniers, Jordaens, Quinten
+Matsys, and Hendrik Leys, and other memorials to the brothers Van
+Eyck, to Memling, Wappers, Frans Hals, Van der Heyden, De Keyser,
+and Verboekhoven. In private and public collections the people
+have jealously kept possession of the masterpieces of their fellow
+countrymen. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, on the Place du Musée, is as
+much a treasure-house of Flemish art as the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam
+is of Dutch art. Again Place Verte plumes itself, for just around the
+corner was born the great Teniers, wizard depicter of tavern life and
+kermesses, and on one side is that tourists’ delight, the graceful,
+feathery well-top that Quinten Matsys wrought out of a single piece of
+iron, before the days when love inspired him to win the most coveted
+laurels of the painter.
+
+However, art aside, Place Verte has distinctions of its own. Something
+of interest is always occurring here. Suburban bands hold weekly
+competitions in its artistic pavilion and the most skillful musicians
+hold concerts here each evening. The sidewalks then are crowded with
+chairs and tables, and at the close the people rise and join in the
+national hymn “La Brabançonne,” with its out-of-date lament to the
+men of Brabant that “the orange may no longer wave upon the tree of
+Liberty.” Of an afternoon a regiment may swing through in full regalia,
+the red, yellow, and black flag snapping in the van, and the band
+crashing out the ancient war-song “Bergen-op-Zoom.” If to-day were
+July 21 there would be tremendous enthusiasm and cheering celebrating
+the Fêtes Nationales in honor of the Revolution of 1830; as well there
+should, for Belgium is the smallest and one of the most desirable
+little kingdoms of all Europe, and the national motto, “L’Union fait la
+Force,” has to be closely adhered to if the Lion of Brabant would stand
+up under the baiting of his powerful and covetous neighbors.
+
+The passing of a Sister of the Béguinage, in sombre black garb and an
+extraordinary creation of immaculate white linen on her head, recalls
+the many things one has read of this interesting and noble order which
+is peculiarly Belgium’s own. Their neat little settlements are a source
+of endless admiration to strangers, and quite as fascinating is their
+beautiful vesper service which bears the pretty name of the “salut des
+Béguines.” Readers of Laurence Sterne, who should be legion, promptly
+recall the curious story of “The Fair Béguine” that Trim told Uncle
+Toby in “Tristram Shandy,” and the valiant Captain’s comment: “They
+visit and take care of the sick by profession—I had rather, for my own
+part, they did it out of good nature.”
+
+It is one of the proud distinctions of Place Verte to be at the very
+portals of Antwerp’s glorious cathedral, the largest, richest, and
+most beautiful in the Netherlands. From his café chair the visitor
+watches its great shadow steal over him as the afternoon wanes, while
+at any moment by merely raising his eyes he may revel in the graceful
+outlines of its sweep of ambulatory chapels and let the aspiring tips
+of delicate pinnacles and arches entice his vision to the loftiest
+point of its one finished and matchless tower. Never was Napoleon so
+pat in “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase” as when he compared
+this tower to Mechlin lace. It is delightful to look up above the
+trees of the Place at the enormous bulk of this tremendous structure,
+stained and darkened by the vapors of river and canals, study its rich
+carvings and stained-glass windows centuries old, and note how the
+blue sky, in patterns of delicate foliation and fragile arch, shines
+like mosaics through the clustered apertures of the filmy openwork of
+the lofty tower. A hundred bells drip mellow music from that exquisite
+belfry every few minutes all day long. You listen, perhaps, to detect
+the impression they gave Thackeray of a new version of the shadow-dance
+from “Dinorah,” conscious that they are going to haunt you as they did
+him for days after you have left Antwerp far behind. It is peculiarly
+appropriate that the Lohengrin Wedding March should be a favorite
+on the bells of the very cathedral where Lohengrin, according to
+the story, was married. Indeed, so many and so varied are the clear
+bell-voices of this great _carillon_ that their music seems, as the
+neighboring bells of Bruges did to Longfellow,—
+
+    “Like the psalms from some old cloister,
+      When the nuns sing in the choir;
+    And the great bell tolled among them,
+      Like the chanting of a friar.”
+
+Within this treasure-chest of a cathedral are jewels worthy of
+such a casket. One goes out of the glare of the afternoon sun into
+the coolness and scented gloom of its vaulted, many-aisled, and
+multi-chapeled vastness, and there in the hush of worshipers kneeling
+in prayer he finds splendid altars that gleam in a profusion of
+ornaments of silver, gold, and precious stones, glorious rose-windows,
+carven confessionals and choir stalls, life-like figures in wax clad
+in silks and crowned in gold, hundreds of masterful paintings, a high
+altar of extraordinary splendor blazing in costly decorations under a
+golden canopy supported by silver figures, and, at the centre of the
+seven aisles, Verbruggen’s far-famed carved wooden pulpit, realistic
+in lifelike foliage and birds, and with plump little cherubim floating
+aloft with the apparently fluttering canopy. As if this were not enough
+to distinguish any one church, here hang three of the most glorious
+creations of the hand of man, the masterpieces of Rubens himself. The
+Assumption alone could have sufficed; what is it, then, to have the
+tremendous glory of the presence of those greater achievements, The
+Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross! One feels he
+could easily do as did the hero of Gautier’s “Golden Fleece” and carry
+away forever after a hopeless passion for the beautiful, grief-stricken
+Magdalen.
+
+The power and appeal of sheer beauty has perhaps never been exampled as
+in the case of this cathedral. Through all the sackings and pillages of
+Antwerp the savagery and destructiveness of her foes have stopped here.
+The most ruthless soldiery could not bring themselves to lay violent
+hands upon it. One exception stands out in this remarkable experience,
+and that one was quite sufficient. The fanatical “Iconoclasts,”
+frenzied against the Church of Rome, fell to a depth of abasement below
+the worst villains of Spain. Those atrocious, misguided “Iconoclasts”!
+What a frightful page in Antwerp’s history is the one that recounts
+the three days of horrors of these frantic and terrible zealots, three
+hundred and fifty years ago! Schiller, Motley, and Prescott have told
+the story as few stories have ever been told. In the calm of this
+afternoon it is impossible to conceive the uproar and confusion with
+which these lofty arches then resounded. Fancy a horde of men and boys,
+lighted by wax tapers in the hands of screaming women of the streets,
+demolishing the altars and rending and destroying every exquisite
+decoration and even tearing open the graves and scattering the bones
+of the dead. Says Motley: “Every statue was hurled from its niche,
+every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully painted window
+shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured
+decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground.
+Indefatigably, audaciously,—endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural
+strength and nimbleness,—these furious Iconoclasts clambered up the
+dizzy heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they
+tore off in triumph the slowly matured fruit of centuries.”
+
+Not the cathedral alone, but every Catholic temple of Antwerp, and four
+hundred others in Flanders, were sacked in this sudden revolt against
+the Papacy. It is said that King Philip, when he heard of it, fell
+into a paroxysm of frenzy and tore his beard for rage, swearing by the
+soul of his father that it should cost them dear. How dear it shortly
+did cost them, both the guilty and the innocent, we are shown in the
+picture Schiller has drawn of Calvinists’ bodies dangling from the
+beams of their roofless churches, of “the places of execution filled
+with corpses, the prisons with condemned victims, the highroads with
+fugitives.” Such was one of the extraordinary experiences through which
+this beautiful cathedral passed—one of the maddest, most senseless,
+and most frightfully punished outbreaks in all history.
+
+In the company of the doves that nest among the pinnacles and arches
+away up in the cathedral tower, one looks out at this hour on a very
+considerable portion of the little kingdom—forty miles, they tell you,
+with a good glass, in any direction. It is a prospect well worth the
+weary climb. Just below, the tiled and gabled roofs rise and fall all
+about like a troubled sea. The crooked streets of the old section and
+the straight ones of the new, and the _places_ and parks in verdant
+spaces here and there have the appearance of some vast topographical
+map. The gray Scheldt lies like a string of Ghent flax to Antwerp’s
+bent bow. A wrinkled arc of massive and intricate fortifications
+wards the rich city from its foes, and just beyond lie numerous tiny
+villages all with the exact primness of mathematical problems. An
+unusual country view is spread out on every hand. Canals, numerous as
+fences and dotted with boats and slowly-moving barges, sear the green
+fields like pale-blue scars; and white, dusty roads criss-cross with
+their solemn flanking of tall poplar trees. As if this region were the
+natural habitat of some strange and monstrous form of animal life, one
+beholds everywhere a semblance of motion and activity in the gaunt,
+waving, canvas arms of hundreds of plethoric windmills. Diminutive,
+trim farms, like little gardens, give the appearance of a general
+carpeting by Turkish rugs of vivid and diversified design; each has
+its whitewashed cottage roofed in thatch or tile and set in orchards
+hedged with box and hawthorn. Fields of corn, wheat, rye, and oats
+expand in well-kept richness, and in all this profusely cultivated
+region men, women, boys, and girls toil from the faintest dawn to
+sunset, and often all night by moonlight, content and even happy in the
+winning of enough to supply clothing and shelter and the unvarying fare
+of soup, coffee, and black rye bread. Seaward and northward lie sand
+dunes, dikes, and polders stretching away to the old morasses where the
+valiant Morini faced and stopped even Cæsar. Literary people will see
+in all this country the land of “Quentin Durward,” as that greatest
+story of Flanders comes to mind, and they will perhaps reflect upon the
+characteristics of the good burghers of those days, whom Sir Walter
+thought “fat and irritable,” and will see young Durward defying the
+ferocious “Wild Boar of Ardennes” in the perilous service of the fair
+Lady Isabelle, herself a Flemish countess.
+
+To the northwest one sees the gleaming reaches of the Scheldt emptying
+themselves into the distant sea and, nearer at hand, solemn little
+Terneuzen where the ships turn into the canal for Ghent—Ghent, the
+“Manchester of Belgium,” where old Roland swings in his belfry and
+calls
+
+                            “o’er lagoon and dike of sand,
+    ‘I am Roland! I am Roland! There is victory in the land.’”
+
+On the east rise the spires of Westmalle, where in their Trappist
+convent austere disciples of St. Bruno, garbed in sackcloth and with
+shaven heads, pass their voiceless lives and keep watch beside the
+open graves in the orchard. To the south is venerable Mechlin on the
+many-bridged river Dyle, once famous for such laces as we may still
+see in the pictures of its immortal son, Frans Hals. Brussels lifts
+its towers forty miles due south, and stretches its broad roads to
+Waterloo. And it is there the black forest of Ardennes expands, where
+St. Hubert, patron of hunters, intercedes for the health of good dogs,
+and which certain Shakespearean editors have fixed upon as the Forest
+of Arden of “As You Like It.” Over there lies Namur where the gallant
+Uncle Toby of “Tristram Shandy” received the painful wound deplored of
+the Widow Wadman, “before the Gate of St. Nicholas,” as the precise
+description always ran, “in one of the traverses of the trench,
+opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of St. Roch.”
+
+One lingers long and delightedly over this charming panorama of
+fascinating and storied associations, until presently the great clock
+beneath us booms the hour of three, and our time is up. We turn
+regretfully from this toyland country and the gracious, old-fashioned
+town—this placid, music-loving, art-reverencing Antwerp, with its
+many gables and its many rare delights. The friendly moon, a little
+later, will silver her huddled roofs and serrated fronts, her façades
+whose fantastic ends will be steps for White Pierrot to go up to his
+chimney-tops, her quiet squares and quaint, twisting alleys, her solid
+burgher mansions and vineclad waterman cottages. Serene and chaste, the
+delicate spire of the magic cathedral will rear its traceried, guardian
+length from out the deep shadows of little Place Verte and look down
+all night, with the affection of half a thousand years, on this quaint
+and merry Antwerp snuggling up to the languid Scheldt.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ROME
+
+3 P.M. TO 4 P.M.
+
+
+Like the lizards in the dusty Forum ruins, emerging from dusky retreats
+to warm and blink in the sun and then flash back into some sheltered
+refuge, so visitors at Rome issue from dim closing museums at three
+o’clock in the afternoon and gaze around in a stupid, dazed fashion on
+a sky of cloudless deep blue and on placid streets and squares that
+seem fairly to quiver in a golden haze of strong sunshine. After the
+cool interiors the sultry heat seems doubly oppressive, and there is
+something of the nature of a mild struggle before reality succeeds
+in summoning them back from that vague state of disassociation,
+that condition of all-mind-and-no-body, produced by an intense and
+protracted study of all those wonderful things that great museums
+contain. To this confused condition of mind there is generally added a
+further disquieting element in the shape of a blank misgiving as to how
+the intervening hour can be tolerably passed before joining the four
+o’clock promenaders in the Pincian Gardens to see Roman Fashion at its
+ante-prandial rites. And yet were strangers merely to remain receptive
+and allow their extraordinary surroundings to assert themselves and
+supply the diversion with which they are dynamically charged, this is
+an hour that might well prove to be one of the most delightful of the
+whole twenty-four in Rome.
+
+For the masterful spell of the Eternal City is still world-conquering;
+it only asks the chance. Protract your stay as you will, there remains
+at last a sense of awe, almost of incredulity, at being, in the actual
+flesh, in precincts so ultra-venerated—in dread, historic Rome. It
+is only a somewhat milder form of the feeling that overpowered you
+the very first morning of your visit when, after the night’s sleep of
+forgetfulness, you read with amazed, half-awake eyes the printed slip
+on the bedroom door that affirmed your hotel to be on no less august
+an eminence than _one of the seven hills of Rome_. Even when you had
+rushed to the window for corroboration and stared out in excited
+astonishment on a vast shoulder of dusty, reddish brown ruins with pert
+vines greening in its loftiest recesses, and a guidebook insisted that
+they were the Baths of Diocletian, a reluctant fear remained that you
+might only be, after all, in the pleasant toils of the old, recurrent
+dream from which you might shortly and miserably awake.
+
+But if, at three o’clock of a summer afternoon, the particular museum
+whose doors are remorselessly closing upon your final, lingering look
+chances to be that fortunate one on the Capitoline Hill that houses,
+among its array of mellow antiques, the pointed-ear original of
+Hawthorne’s “Marble Faun,” you could not do better than make use of the
+remainder of the admission ticket and have a survey of Rome from the
+airy summit of the campanile in the rear. To effect this, one picks
+his way among the imposing remains of the ancient record-house of the
+_tabularium_, mounts the long flight of iron steps in a corner of its
+colonnade, and soon reaches the top of the tower of the Capitol, with
+Rome as utterly at his feet as ever it appeared to the eyes of Alaric
+and his Goths.
+
+In tones of soft yellow, gray, and dull orange the roof-masses sweep
+northward, eastward, and westward, while to the southward and at
+your feet lies heaped the earthy, dusty chaos of ruins that crown
+the imperial Palatine, the popular Cælian, and the luckless Aventine
+Hills. Parks and villa gardens are blotches of dark foliage; and,
+within its white embankment walls, the sacred Tiber, in a twisting
+yellow band, rushes swiftly down the face of the city in its mad rush
+for Ostia and the sea. Beyond the most distant suburbs extend the
+rolling plains of the Campagna like an all-embracing sea, until they
+seem to wash in a gentle surf about the Sabine foot-hills, away to the
+north, and brim southward to the verge of the Alban Hills beyond the
+farthest glimpse of the Aqueduct’s long line of broken arches or the
+dimming perspective of that taut thread, the Appian Way. From this
+vantage-point the city may hide no surface secrets. It lies below us
+like an enormous fan, whose converging point is the round Piazza del
+Popolo, a good mile to the north. Like three great fingers, there
+extend from that focus the Via Ripetta, the Via Babuino, and, in the
+centre and running toward us as straight as a ruler, the popular Corso
+carrying the old Flaminian Way right through the heart of modern Rome.
+By degrees we come to distinguish familiar churches among the hundreds
+of spires, towers, and domes; to pick out, here and there, a mediæval
+watchtower; to locate well-known squares; to name an occasional
+obelisk; to identify a column; and even to particularize some of the
+scores of fountains that give latter-day Rome a pleasant distinction
+among modern cities. The ribbed, blue-gray dome of St. Peter’s looms
+impressively from out the deep green of the Papal Gardens of the
+yellow Vatican; the circular bulk of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo and
+the columned Pantheon look as familiar as old friends to us—though
+they may not be friends to each other, with the latter, under papal
+stress, forced in other days to yield its beautiful bronze tiles to
+make saints’ ornaments and cannon for the former; the yellow walls of
+the Sant’ Onofrio monastery mark where died Tasso, “King of Bards,”
+and where they still show his crucifix and inkstand; and yonder is the
+great gray church where Beatrice Cenci lies in her nameless grave. If
+we turn and look southward we see strange sun-tricks among the bleak
+and shadowy corridors of the vast, half-demolished Colosseum, and
+crumbling arches of the emperors warm into a venerable dotage. The
+sun-baked wreckage of the Forum expands at our feet in rows of column
+stumps, shattered arches, isolated shafts with clinging fragments of
+cornice and entablature, yawning earthen doorways and dusty heaps of
+cluttered brick and _tufa_,—like a gigantic honeycomb,—while all
+about it birds are singing divinely in the shade of the laurels. The
+famed Tarpeian Rock, just at hand, has little suggestion of a short
+shrift for traitors, with rookeries nestling snugly to its base and a
+rose-trellised garden on its commodious summit.
+
+Victor Emmanuel II, in the regal cool of bronze, gazes over his
+colossal charger in the gigantic monument on the Capitoline slopes
+below us and beholds the hills studded with the pretty white villas
+of his grandson’s prosperous subjects, and the Quarter of the Fields
+carpeted with the neat stucco homes of the poor that used to languish
+in the vile slums of the old Ghetto. Had he read Zola’s “Rome” he might
+even be justified in frowning at so defamatory a description of so
+pleasant a section. But apparently he prefers to watch the afternoon
+glow on the gleaming domes and towers and myrtle-set villas of the
+Trastevere, where the powerful and violent descendants of the ancient
+Romans still dwell; and to take amused note of Garibaldi over there
+twisting around on his big bronze horse to keep a wary eye on St.
+Peter’s.
+
+It taxes the credulity of the visitor to comprehend that yonder is
+the renowned Janiculum, down whose slopes Lars Porsena led his troops
+to contend with Horatius Cocles and his intrepid companions as they
+“held the bridge”—only a hundred yards from where we are standing.
+And, indeed, imagination is quite unequal to the tasks set it on
+all this historic ground. Even if we succeed in carrying ourselves
+back through the periods of the popes, the emperors, the republic,
+the kings, and possibly the shepherds, what is to become of us when
+confronted with the statement of Ampère that there were really “nine
+Romes before Rome.” It is quite enough to undertake the reconstruction
+of ancient Rome to the mind’s eye, such as authentic history describes
+it, considering how repeatedly its conquerors sacked it, and how both
+Nero and Robert Guisecard burned it; and that the Romans themselves, as
+Lanciani insists, have done more harm to it than all invading hosts put
+together. “What the Barbarians did not do,” ran the famous pasquinade,
+“the Barberini did.” It is, really, asking too much of the man who is
+risking “a touch of sun” to see the city from the sweltering top of
+the Capitol Tower, to expect him to be communing with himself in terms
+of _travertine_ and _peperino_ and reassembling antiquities as an
+agreeable pastime. He will probably content himself with a hasty glance
+around, and a little irreverent levity over the task of Ascanius, son
+of “the pious Æneas,” in building a city on the scraggy ridge of
+distant Alba Longa, or the scramble the Roman bachelors must have had
+when they scampered down the neighboring Quirinal Hill with their arms
+full of their Sabine allies’ wives. As he trudges down the tower steps
+and catches periodic glimpses of that ancient Latium that is now the
+Campagna, he ought to devote a moment to self-congratulation that the
+pestilence no longer stalks there by night and noon-day, or that the
+evil _campagnards_ of Andersen’s “Improvisatore” no more terrorize with
+impunity, or wild beasts imperil the wayfarer; but rather that these
+latter themselves flee, especially the foxes, what time the red-coated
+gentlemen of the English Hunt round on them among the shattered tombs
+of the Appian Way.
+
+And yet, if the visitor is a sentimentalist, no Italian sun is going to
+rob him of his reverie: he will be hearing the cries of the Christian
+martyrs at a Colosseum matinée, and beholding the pride and beauty of
+ancient Rome loitering along the palace-lined streets on their way to
+the afternoon diversions at the Baths of Caracalla. And the Forum will
+bustle with the state business of the world, Cicero will mount the
+rostrum, and a train of Vestal Virgins pass demurely along the Sacra
+Via. He will attend the mournful wails of priests at worship in the
+temples of Jupiter and Saturn, and thrill to see a detachment of the
+Prætorian Guard dash into the Forum and acclaim some new military hero
+as emperor. But this should be sufficient to startle him back to the
+Rome of to-day, and as he looks anxiously over to the northwestern
+walls, beyond which once stood that infamous camp, he will doubtless
+rejoice devoutly that the sober and law-abiding soldiery that drills
+there now is something so very different from the uncontrollable
+“Frankenstein” that the Cæsars devised to their own undoing. It is,
+in consequence, with hearty complacence that he will turn his back on
+even the aristocratic treasure-heap of the lordly Palatine, conscious
+that if the cry were raised to-day, “Why is the Forum crowded, what
+means this stir in Rome?” the reply would be forthcoming, “Tourists and
+picture-card sellers and peddlers of cameo pins.”
+
+Parenthetically, it may be observed that, although pathos and bathos
+rub elbows in the foregoing reflections, still incongruities come
+very near to being the rule in latter-day Rome. What is to be said
+of obelisks of the Pharaohs with Christian crosses on their tops? Of
+the column of Trajan with St. Peter at its summit, and at its base
+those twentieth-century cats that visitors feed with fish bought
+from stands at hand for the purpose? Of St. Paul on the column of
+Marcus Aurelius, and the sign of an American life insurance company
+across the street? Of a modern playhouse in the mausoleum of Augustus
+where the emperors were buried? Of the present use of King Tarquin’s
+great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, just as good as it was twenty-five
+hundred years ago? Of electric lights where Cincinnatus had his
+cabbage-farm? Of a Jewish cemetery above the circus of Tarquin? Of
+steam-heated flats in the gardens of Sallust? Of modern houses at the
+Tarpeian Rock, and the Baths of Agrippa? Of street cars with the name
+of Diocletian? Of automobiles on the Flaminian Way? Of tennis courts
+beside the burial-place of a Cæsar? Of motor-cycles around the tomb of
+the Scipios? Of an annual Derby down the Appian Way? Of railroad trains
+beside the old Servian Wall? Of telephone booths on the banks of Father
+Tiber? Modernism is, indeed, with us, as his Holiness laments!
+
+The sultry, torrid hour that lies between three o’clock and four of
+a summer afternoon usually sees Rome rubbing her eyes, fresh from
+her siesta, that ancient midday nap that Varro declared he could
+not live without; and you may be sure the final rub would be one of
+vast amusement if she were to see you walking on the sunny side of
+the street, where, by the terms of her immemorial observation, only
+dogs and foreigners go. The heat is intense on these lava pavements;
+one keeps religiously to the shade. But Roman society is not rubbing
+its eyes,—at least, not in town,—for _tout le monde_ is passing
+the annual _villeggiatura_ at its villa in the hills or by the sea,
+economizing for the fashionable expenditure of the winter, and,
+incidentally, obliging the people who stay in town with that much more
+of elbow room on the Corso and other popular promenades. All of which
+helps a little in making the stroll from the Capitoline Hill to the
+Pincian Gardens rather more comfortable than moving around the hot-room
+of a Turkish bath.
+
+As we pick our way down the Capitoline slope, pass Marcus Aurelius on
+his fat bronze steed, and “bend our steps,” as the old novels used
+to say, toward the tramway-haunted uproar of the Piazza di Venezia,
+the rabble rout of the slum district on the left affords a lively
+conception of the element that goes farthest to make Rome howl. Having
+been told that this old Ghetto had been swept and garnished, one is
+properly indignant at finding the air redolent of garlic and everybody
+under conviction that the chief end of man is to amass macaroni and
+enjoy it forever. You gaze askance on a universal costume of filth and
+rags, and hurry along through it, protesting that, while you would
+not invoke the precedent of Pope Paul IV’s sixteenth-century method
+of putting gates across the streets, and locking the people in and
+making the men wear yellow hats and the women yellow veils, as he did
+with the Jews, still some expedient ought to be hit upon for making
+the district look a little less like a camp of Falstaff recruits. “A
+frowzy-headed laborer,” say you, “shouldering a basket of charcoal, may
+seem attractive in Mr. Storey’s ‘Roba di Roma,’ but in real life one
+likes to think men can afford shirts, and not have to wear rags over
+their shoulders after the manner of a herald’s tabard.” You pause a
+moment to watch the disappearance of a yard of macaroni down some red
+gullet, and George Augustus Sala’s description of the banquet of the
+seven wagoners rushes to mind: “Upon this vast mess they fell tooth
+and nail. The simile is, perchance, not strictly correct. Teeth may be
+_de trop_. You should never bite or chew macaroni, but swallow each
+pipe whole, grease and all, as though it were so much flattery. But
+their nails they did use, seeing that they ate the macaroni with their
+fingers. What wondrous twistings and turnings-back of their heads, what
+play of the muscles of their throats, what straining of their eyeballs
+and vasty openings of their jaws, did I study as they swallowed their
+food.”
+
+And now we begin to have the usual experience of Roman mendicancy.
+Truly, there is no beggar like your Roman beggar. He has raised his
+profession to both an art and a nuisance. Appeals to charity take every
+form and phase. Evidences of anatomical disaster are utilized to excite
+pity at so much per sigh. Tales of misery and misfortune ring all the
+changes of fervency and fancy. Their whines are both groveling and
+dramatic. “Niente!” they moan, as with woe-begone faces and pathetic
+twists of their necks they sidle up with stiff gestures of weary and
+hopeless expressiveness; “Illustrissimo! Eccellenza! Per amor di Dio!”
+You could not bluff them, though you were armored in all the calloused
+nonchalance of the average ambulance surgeon; and your doom is sealed
+if you undertake to bandy repartee, for their invective is as searching
+as a satire of Juvenal. Whether you give or not, their volubility
+and frankness continue unabated; for you are savagely cursed if you
+decline, and if you acquiesce are blessed strictly in proportion to
+the gratuity. Indubitably, in the social scheme of the beggar we be
+brethren all and should each aid the other—after the philosophy of the
+Italian, saying, “One hand washes the other, and both the face.” The
+Roman, understanding them, passes coolly by; but the foreigner, who is
+their special prey, gives up in desperation, on the principle of the
+local proverb, “We are in the ballroom and we must dance.”
+
+Parenthetically, again, they say the authorities are helpless to curb
+this universal Roman nuisance. It is an institution. These beggars
+come of all classes—from the Capuchin and Franciscan lay brothers
+who go about in brown robes, rope girdles, and sandals and present a
+basket for food, to the dirty urchins of the Appian Way who stop your
+carriage with their acrobatic proficiency and then howl for _soldi_ in
+the name of all the saints. Many a beggar here is a bank depositor;
+and any of them who can retain the monopoly of the door of a popular
+church may confidently look forward to affluence. Very likely they are
+better business men, in their way, than many who drop coins into their
+pathetic, swindling hands. _À chacun son métier._
+
+It would extend a Brooklynite to negotiate the crossing of the Piazza
+di Venezia. It is the grand gathering-place of tramcars, busses,
+cabs, carts, bicycles, and every other form of conveyance. You will
+certainly find a “Seeing Rome” automobile, with the lecturer pointing
+out the castellated old Palazzo di Venezia and telling his people that
+it was built of stone from the Colosseum, and has been the seat of
+the Austrian embassy to the Curia for over a hundred years. So far as
+traffic is concerned, this is the heart of Rome. Nothing less than a
+whirlpool could be expected in a spot that is the confluence of such
+full streams of life as the Corso and the Via Nazionale. One admires
+its broad, busy sweep, and the dignity of the solid old gray buildings
+that rim it. No mid-afternoon heat lessens the bustle and activity that
+rages here; even the experienced natives can be found in large numbers,
+jostling their way across it, and visitors pass through in droves to
+reach the Cenci Palace or to see the spot where Paul dwelt for two
+years “in his own hired house.”
+
+If you stopped, as I did, at one of the hotels near the Baths of
+Diocletian, the Via Nazionale will have a friendly suggestion of the
+nearest way home. With thoughts of that temporary home the recollection
+often comes to me of the mildly stimulating delight I once found in
+getting lost by night in this city of superior chance encounters.
+It seemed, on the first occasion, as though I had scarcely turned
+the corner into the Via Cavour before a delicious conviction of
+unfamiliarity with my surroundings assured me I was pursuing a course
+that was certain, sooner or later, to lead to artistic discovery
+or adventure. Nothing was easier than getting lost, for I was newly
+arrived; and yet localities and objects of consequence were not without
+significance, for, like every one else, I had a vivid idea of the
+landmarks of the famous city. And first of all, I discovered I was
+passing the infamous spot where “the impious Tullia” drove her chariot
+across the bleeding body of her royal father; whence I hastened on,
+with furtive glances. Next, after some speculation I identified an
+enormous church to be none other than the famous Santa Maria Maggiore,
+whose ceilings, I had read, were crusted with the first gold brought
+from the New World, and to whose high altar the popes used to come by
+torchlight for New Year’s mass. I thrilled at the incredible reflection
+that the street cars crossing that corner would be passing, a moment
+later, the site of the gardens of Mæcenas where Horace and Virgil
+had mused and read their verses. A few blocks farther on I came to a
+halt before the house of Lucrezia Borgia; and I tried to fancy the
+circumstances of the night of their quiet family supper there, before
+the children took leave of their mother with false words of affection
+and Cæsar hurried to gather his bravos and overtook Francesco, and,
+muffled in a cloak, sat his horse in easy unconcern while his brother
+was done to death and thrown into the Tiber. For relief I turned
+across the street to the church of St. Peter-in-Chains, and imagined
+how Michael Angelo’s vigorous Moses might be appearing in the dark of
+the side aisle, and thought of the master striking the completed work
+with his mallet and crying out, “Now, speak!” On I rambled, through a
+block or two of darkened shops and gloomy houses, and suddenly a great
+open space yawned before me and I was staring at rows of column stumps,
+mellowed and battered, and among them a tall, ghostly shaft of marble
+with a spiral band of half-mutilated reliefs winding away up to the
+summit, where was the dusky outline of a sculptured form. It was the
+old school-geography picture come to life! There was I in the heart
+of an unfamiliar city, alone, by night, with this vast relic of the
+ancients. It was like Stanley finding Livingstone in Africa. I felt I
+had honestly discovered it and that it ought to be mine. It was the
+Forum of Trajan!
+
+It will seem a violent transition to jump from midnight to
+mid-afternoon, but the plunge must be taken. The normal state of
+the Corso at three-thirty of a summer afternoon is one of leisurely
+activity. The crowds are lethargic, slow-moving, inclined to curiosity.
+An interesting social comedy is proceeding, with foreign ladies playing
+sight-seeing rôles, clutching their red Baedekers and Hare’s “Walks
+in Rome.” Jostling groups of them gather before the beguiling shop
+windows, and occasionally one enters and possesses herself of a Roman
+pearl or cameo, or perhaps a mosaic or copy of an antique bronze.
+Business people pass along in their habitually distrait manner, and
+priests beyond number brighten the scene with habits of every hue.
+There is little enough of room in the middle of the street and scarcely
+any on the sidewalks. Like all Roman thoroughfares, the Corso is clean
+and distinguished. Long perspectives of gayly awninged shops extend
+toward the Piazza del Popolo, agreeably broken here and there by the
+interposition of mellow old palace fronts and richly sculptured baroque
+façades; and there is frequent opportunity for passing glimpses into
+cool courtyards attractive with foliage and fountains.
+
+Visitors keep forsaking the Corso at every turning to make inspiring
+discoveries in the tangled mesh of side streets. We are at liberty
+to suspect those who go to the west, of sentimental designs on the
+star under the dome of a neighboring church that marks the spot where
+Julius Cæsar was assassinated in Pompey’s Senate House; or, perhaps,
+of an intention to visit the sombre statue of Giordano Bruno in the
+Field of Flowers, and reflect upon what a constant rebuke it must be to
+the church that burned him there, three centuries ago, for persisting
+in his “modernism” to the outrageous extremity of defending the
+astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and like heresies of the hour.
+
+Afternoon walks in Rome should be frequently interrupted, not only
+to escape the floods of sunshine, but to find out occasionally what
+is behind the mellow garden walls over whose tops glistening, green
+foliage droops enticingly down with hints of cool and restful
+retreats. Such an opportunity presents itself here in the rare Colonna
+Gardens, just around the corner of the great Colonna Palace where
+earlier in the day the Titians and Tintorettos ravish the artistic.
+Spacious, elegant Rome has nothing more charming and exquisite than
+such gardens as these. Art and antiquity are everywhere in restful
+profusion—“storied urn and animated bust.” It is even said that
+sculptures are to be found almost anywhere underground for the mere
+pains of exhuming. One rests with infinite satisfaction in the deep
+shade of eucalyptus, cypress, ilex, and laurel, to the sweet singing
+of multitudes of birds. There are roses and oranges in bloom, and tall
+hedges of clipped box, and musical little cascades tumble down from
+terrace to terrace and drip over mossy marble steps. In this particular
+garden come thoughts of Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, who so
+often strolled along these very paths and communed in their serene and
+beautiful friendship. Theirs was a faith that brought its own reward.
+
+And what, pray, without its amazing faith, would this Catholic Rome be,
+anyway? _À chaque saint sa chandelle._ Otherwise, what would become
+of that marble block from the floor of the Appian Way—which the
+stubborn archæologists will insist was really paved with silex—that
+is preserved with so much reverence in the church of Domine Quo Vadis,
+as showing the impressions of the feet of Our Lord and St. Peter when
+they faced each other there on the occasion of the memorable rebuke
+of the latter for his proposed flight from Rome? And how about the
+_scala santa_—the worn and venerated marble steps in the shrine near
+the church of St. John Lateran, which were brought from Jerusalem and
+up which we are told Christ passed on his way to the judgment seat of
+Pilate? The faithful thank God for the privilege of ascending them on
+their knees, praying, and receiving the indulgence of a thousand years
+of purgatory; and they were worn thin with kisses long before the day
+when Martin Luther got halfway up and suddenly quit and came tramping
+down with a voice crying in his ears, “The just shall live by faith.”
+And without faith, where would be the use of the miraculous Bambino,
+the adored and bejeweled little wooden image that a Franciscan pilgrim
+carved from a tree of the Mount of Olives and which is imposingly
+domiciled in a glass case in the church of Ara Cœli? They say there
+is no disease that the Bambino cannot cure; and when his keepers
+accompany him through the streets on his errands of mercy, conveyed
+in his magnificent buff coach, people kneel by hundreds and beseech a
+blessing. Such blessing may be secured, though possibly of a diminished
+efficacy, by buying one of his legended cards at the church and having
+the priest rub it across the glass top of the case. Who would eschew
+faith and forfeit such advantages? Would we not still have Life’s
+puzzle, and without this key? Might we not even be reduced to a plane
+as confused and desperate as that of the famous Sultan of Turkey, who
+knew so little of music that, when his new Italian band had finished
+tuning-up, he shouted in delight to the leader, “Marshallah! Let the
+dogs play that tune again!”
+
+At this languorous hour of the afternoon the broad, sunny piazzas with
+their many fountains afford incomparably lovely loitering-places on the
+way to the Pincio. The one of the Quirinal is a near neighbor to the
+Colonna Gardens, and there you may shelter under eucalyptus trees and
+dream over the brown old obelisk and the vigorous fountain sculptures
+of the “horse-tamers” that once graced the Baths of Constantine, and
+philosophize over the irony of fate that converted a papal summer
+residence into a royal palace. Or you can thread your way through
+narrow streets of the Middle Ages that are lined by ochre-colored
+houses with sun-shades, where artists have their studios and transients
+their _hôtels garnis_, and down which a belated wine-cart may jangle
+or a gayly painted Campagna wagon creak, with its oxen festive in
+bells and crimson tassels and its rugged driver clad in blue. Were
+you to follow these typical byways of mediæval Rome until you came to
+the embankment of the Sant’ Angelo Bridge, you would pass by where
+Benvenuto Cellini lived among his goldsmiths, and could identify the
+Gothic window of the old Inn of the Bear where Montaigne stopped,
+centuries ago.
+
+At this hour the Trevi Fountain is doubly appealing and refreshing,
+rejoicing the whole side of its roomy square with sparkling waters that
+dash merrily about Neptune and his allies in the wall niches. Devoted
+as one may be to the venerable tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Appian
+Way, he will fervently commend Pope Clement for having pillaged some
+of its stone to supply this cheery fountain with its dramatic setting.
+Were this our last day in the city we should certainly toss a copper
+coin over our left shoulder into these boiling waters, to insure a
+return to Rome. Of course, one is pretty sure to come again anyhow; but
+that makes it a certainty. Besides, it is much less trouble than going
+away out to Tivoli to ask the same thing of the Sibyl in the Grotto.
+
+Were you to yield to the fountain habit, you would go bird-hopping all
+over town, for no city has so many or such beautiful ones as Rome,
+thanks to its huge aqueducts. It is a never-failing delight to turn a
+corner and come across one of these sun-deluged pleasaunces with its
+crowds of picturesque loungers; its tritons, “rivers,” and sea gods
+disporting themselves in attitudes of aqueous grace and gayety; its
+flower-girls banked behind fragrant barriers of roses and violets; and
+the slender columns of water streaming sideways like tattered flags in
+a breeze.
+
+[Illustration: ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA]
+
+Mid-afternoon is an admirable time to drop in at the most popular of
+all the piazzas, the Spanish Square. One wonders how the jewelers
+of the Via Condotti manage to make both ends meet, with such a
+superior attraction at hand. It is certainly one of the most charming
+nooks in Rome. A heavy golden sunshine glorifies, at this hour, the
+broad reach of the Spanish Steps, themselves quite as wide as the
+square, that sweep between picturesque parapets like a yellow cascade
+from the terraces of the church at S. Trinità de’ Monte to the
+boat-shaped fountain in the piazza below. About them, drowsy, dusty,
+Old-World houses supply a pleasant background of soft color, and the
+crystal-clear Italian sky spreads above like a cathedral dome. The
+flower market is the crowning touch, with a flood of fragrant blooms
+welling over the lower steps and rimming the fountain edge in brilliant
+hues of purple Roman anemones, orange wallflowers, white narcissus,
+golden daffodils, snowy gardenias, violets, camelias, hyacinths,
+mignonettes, and every fair and odorous blossom. A lovely, sunny,
+fragrant spot—this Piazza di Spagna; a place to dream whole days away
+in; a well-beloved corner of fascinating Rome, where one may realize to
+its fullness the beautiful, consoling reflection of Don Quixote, “But
+still there’s sunshine on the wall.”
+
+Literature has had its chosen seat in the Piazza di Spagna. Half the
+traveled world of letters has lived or visited there. It invests the
+spot with a fresh and human interest to know that it has been the
+musing-place of such rare spirits as Byron, Smollett, Madame de Staël,
+Cooper, Andersen, Thorwaldsen, Hawthorne, Goethe, Chateaubriand,
+Dickens, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Lowell, and Longfellow. One
+thinks of the Brownings entertaining Thackeray, Lockhart, and Fanny
+Kemble. But, of course, the closest memories are of Keats and Shelley,
+who lived in either corner house—those radiant friends whose ashes
+repose under myrtles and violets in the cypress-shaded cemetery beyond
+the Aurelian Wall. The works of all these authors, as also of the
+others who may or may not have seen the Piazza di Spagna,—along with
+the idealism of Fogazzaro, the sensuality of D’ Annunzio, the realism
+of Verga, and the grace of De Amicis,—are to be had at the celebrated
+shops of Piale or Spithöver, in the square; where, also, you may at
+little expense become a momentary part of Rome’s bohemia over toast and
+muffins in the adjoining tea-rooms.
+
+_Chacun à son goût._ If you are cold to tea there may be something
+else to interest in the numerous cafés of the neighborhood that begin
+to hum with activity as the hour approaches four. And, indeed, they
+may be angels in disguise for such as have tried _pension_ life and
+grown sadly familiar with puddings as mysterious as Scotch haggis,
+meat that suggested _travertine_, and pies constructed of something
+like _silex_ and _tufa_. Besides, in the cafés you can regale yourself
+with vermouth, syrups, or ices, and at the same time observe the Roman
+at his afternoon ease—thus realizing in yourself the acuteness of
+the Italian proverb, “One blow at the hoop and one at the cask.” It
+is quite worth the cost to see how quickly the chairs and little
+marble-topped tables, out on the sidewalk, are taken by leisurely
+_habitués_ bent on gossip; by precise old gentlemen in lavender gloves
+who drop in for a tumbler of black coffee and a hand at dominoes; or
+by foppish young men in duck trousers, who clatter on the tables for
+the _cameriere_ to bring copies of the “Tribuna” so they may sup on
+frivolities and horrors along with coffee and tobacco.
+
+A ruder jocundity also, at this time, is making its start for high tide
+in poorer sections, where in arbored _osteries_, Tuscan wine-shops, and
+_spacci da vino_ straw-covered fiascos of chianti are passing, along
+with glasses of local wines whose prices will be found conspicuously
+chalked up on the outsides of the taverns at so many _soldi_ per
+half-litre.
+
+As we follow the Corso toward the Pincian Gardens we find the
+congestion increasing, with a decided addition of carriages all bound
+in our direction. It is now the hour of the afternoon _passeggiata_;
+and one marvels that the ancient campus Martius should still be the
+heart of Rome, and wonders how this narrow street could have held its
+crowds when the mad, brilliant scenes of Carnival riot and revelry
+were enacted before these old Renaissance palaces. Every restaurant of
+the tumultuous Piazza Colonna is working to capacity, and groups of
+gay army officers swagger about the corners and over by the marble
+basin beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius where the taxi-cabs have
+their chief stand. No red-and-white street car dares venture in this
+favorite square, but busses and cabs supplant them to distraction.
+And who, indeed, does not prefer an omnibus to a street car! It may
+want the latter’s business-like directness, but what a holiday air it
+has of cozy, informal deliberateness! It is coaching in town. You may
+not arrive so soon, but what a lark you had! And if you mock at the
+faithful bus, there are the impertinent Roman cabs. Here is speed,
+seclusion, and economy. You cannot fail to be suited both financially
+and æsthetically, for you may pick between the latest varnished
+output of the factory and venerable, decrepit ramshackles that look
+to have been contemporary with the Colosseum. The Roman cabmen are an
+inconsequent lot; they wear green felt hats and greasy coats, and dash
+at one with a reckless scorn of human life that strengthens a suspicion
+that they are really banditti of the Campagna, transparently disguised.
+The famous Column of the philosophic Emperor never lacks its groupings
+of adaptable “rubber-necks,” who are twisting themselves into suicide
+graves trying to read the spiral band of reliefs that winds away up to
+the statue of St. Paul.
+
+The Corso _passeggiata_ is an interesting affair. Toward four o’clock
+it quite fills the street. Young girls are out, with their inevitable
+chaperons, kittenish and alert-eyed; Bergamasque nurses, with scarlet
+ribbons and extraordinary silver ornaments falling below their snowy
+muslin caps; clerks in sober black; Douane men, in short capes
+and shining hats with yellow rosettes; hatless women, with light
+mantillas over their blue-black hair; the stolid country-folk,—the
+_contadini_,—with the men in brown velvet jackets and goatskin
+breeches, and the women in faded blue skirts and with red stays
+stitched outside their bodices; the despised _forestieri_, with
+guidebooks; _carabinieri_, in pairs, resplendent in braided uniforms
+and cocked hats; the nervous Bersaglieri, with shining round hats
+and glossy cocks’-feather plumes; army officers in cloaks or bright
+blue guard-coats, fresh from vermouth at Aragni’s; Savoyards in steel
+helmets and gold crests; diplomats in silk hats and Prince Albert
+coats; and clericals by the hundreds. The clericals, indeed, may
+always be relied upon to supply an effective color-touch anywhere in
+Rome. They come along in fluttering groups of every hue: English and
+French seminarists in cassocks of black, Germans in scarlet, Scotch
+in purple, and Roumanians in orange and blue; it is diverting to see
+them raise their black beavers to one another with the quietest and
+most serious air imaginable. Solemn lay brethren shuffle past in sombre
+brown of Franciscan and Capuchin, or white of the cowled and tonsured
+Dominicans. Occasionally, along a side street, one passes slowly,
+absorbed in his breviary, like Don Abbondio in “I Promessi Sposi.”
+Rome abounds in shovel-hats, shaven heads, sandals, and hempen girdles.
+But you must not expect to see them all in a Corso _passeggiata_.
+
+Unless we have yielded too much to the blandishments along the way, we
+should be crossing the sunny, somnolent circle of the Piazza del Popolo
+and climbing the fountained and statue-set terraces of the Pincian
+Gardens as the first strains of the promenade concert usher in the
+hour of four. The spectacle that confronts us on the low, broad brow
+of the old hill is animated and brilliant. Hundreds of motor-cars,
+private carriages and hired cabs roll in a long, gay procession around
+the driveways, their occupants arrayed in the last word of Italian
+fashion, and a multitude of happy loiterers stroll leisurely in the
+mild afternoon sunshine along sylvan paths hedged with box or bordered
+with flowers, where long lines of marble portrait-busts of Italy’s
+dead immortals extend into the pleasant shade of groves of myrtles and
+fragrant acacias. What a contrast in occupation to the scenes that in
+olden days were enacted here—the luxury and splendor of the golden
+suppers that the war-worn Lucullus gave to Rome’s poets and artists;
+or the vicious and voluptuous orgies with which the vile Messalina
+indulged the depraved favorites of the Claudian court! Young Rome, this
+afternoon, has decked itself in its gayest raiment, and youth vies
+with youth in gallantries to the fashionable beauties who prefer the
+fascinating town, even in summer, to the listless diversions of the
+country. “Visiting” goes on between carriage-parties, which is said to
+answer the social requirements of calls at the house. Mild refreshments
+are being served in a lively little café to which many repair when
+weary with lounging among the brilliant flowers and lovely foliaged
+paths; and groups ramble across the new viaduct and stroll among the
+sycamores and stone-pines of the neighboring Villa Borghese. The
+Pincian Gardens seem very formal and compact and precisely ornate as
+compared with our parks at home, but there is much more of sociability
+and comfort than is to be found Sunday afternoons in New York’s Central
+Park, for instance. That is probably because New York’s pedestrians
+are centred in the Mall to hear the band, or around the lakes to watch
+the boating, and all her carriage-folk are by themselves in the East
+Side Drive. The Pincian promenade mingles both classes into a great
+family party. It is a brilliant scene, but it must have been much more
+so in other days when the popes joined the company in the great glass
+coach drawn by six black horses in crimson trappings, and outriders and
+footmen flocked about them.
+
+One wonders whether Pius X does not sometimes think with a sigh of
+regret of the liberties of his early predecessors, as he paces the
+flowered garden paths of his voluntary prison and lifts his gentle,
+shining face toward these pleasant Pincian heights. How often will the
+memory recur to me of that mild and friendly man, as once I saw him
+in the Vatican’s Court of the Pine, in his snowy robes and the little
+cap scarce whiter than his hair. I remember his only ornaments to have
+been the famous Fisherman’s ring, and a long gold chain about his
+neck from which a great crucifix was pendent. It was the occasion of
+a calisthenic drill given by a local orphan asylum for his Holiness’s
+special benefit. Each little athlete in gray was burning to do his
+very best in so notable a presence, and was, indeed, succeeding, with
+the glaring exception of the smallest of the band, whose eager efforts
+had resulted only in an uninterrupted series of comical mischances,
+to the infinite chagrin of himself and associates and the increasing
+amusement of the Pope. In due time the performance came to an end,
+and the boys were drawn up facing each other in a double line through
+which, attended by cardinals, chamberlains, and members of the Papal
+Guard, his Holiness passed extending his hand to be kissed. When he
+reached the diminutive and blushing blunderer, he halted his imposing
+train and laid his hand on the boy’s head and smoothed his hair and
+patted his cheek with affectionate tenderness, whispering the while an
+intimate message of good cheer, as though it were something strictly
+confidential between himself and that fatherless little waif whose face
+was shining with reverence and awe and whose eyes were full of happy
+tears. I am, I trust, as confirmed a Protestant as the next, but I
+confess that my heart was bowed as well as my head as that white-robed
+figure turned, as it disappeared through a door of the Vatican, and
+raised a hand toward us in the sign of the cross.
+
+The marble parapet of the Pincio is, at this hour, a prime favorite
+among Roman loafing-places. As from an upper theatre box, one looks
+precipitously down into the great, peaceful, siesta-drugged circle
+of the Piazza del Popolo, the scene in other days of so much cruelty
+and often of so much happiness. The stone lions of the fountain spout
+patiently to the delighted observation of scores of playing children,
+and drowsy cabmen nod on the boxes of the long rank of waiting
+victorias. One may indulge to his fullest in moral reflections over the
+slender obelisk from the Heliopolis Temple to the Sun, upon which Moses
+himself may have gazed in days before Rome was thought of, and when the
+celestial consorts, Isis and Osiris, still waved their lotus sceptres
+and ruled the quick and the dead. Nineteen hundred years ago Nero,
+who should have begun blood-letting with himself instead of ending it
+there, was buried in this ground, and you are told how the evil spirits
+that haunted the accursed spot were not finally exorcised until yonder
+church of Santa Maria had been reared above his tomb. One will find it
+more agreeable to look across the piazza at the portal of the Flaminian
+Way and re-create the scenes of the triumphant entrance of the noble,
+hardy Trajan walking by the side of his fair and amiable wife.
+
+The elm-tops are rustling in the deep groves of the Villa Borghese,
+and the yellow Tiber, “too large to be harmless and too small to be
+useful,” slips swiftly between the yellow walls of its quays. To the
+mind’s eye, in the azure distance Mons Sacer is clear, and Tivoli and
+the Sabine Farm of Horace. Like the Archangel Michael on the Castle
+of Sant’ Angelo, the sun, too, begins to sheathe his sword, and its
+glitter throws a warm mantle over the shoulders of the marble angels on
+the bridge. Most conspicuously, as is proper, it lingers on the pale
+dome of St. Peter’s, touches into life the sculptured saints of the
+portico, and floods obelisk, fountains, and all that vast elliptical
+piazza toward which are extended the sheltering arms of Bernini’s
+colonnade. How fair, beneath that roof, are the dazzling marbles,
+shining tombs, sculptured effigies, and glowing mosaics! But fairer
+far is this prospect from the hill, of Rome in her soft coat of many
+colors, the velvety ruins of the Palatine, the stone-pines in sentinel
+stiffness down the distant Appian Way, the sunny piazzas, the sparkling
+fountains, and the verdure and bloom of the slopes of the Janiculum,
+under the cloudless blue of a soft Italian sky. _Ave, Roma eterna!_
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PRAGUE
+
+4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.
+
+
+A brooding, stolid city is Prague; the sombre capital of a restless,
+feverish people. It is the hotbed and “darling seat” of all Bohemia;
+and Bohemia languishes for her lost independence as Israel did by the
+waters of Babylon. She does not, however, pine in hopeless despair like
+the Hebrews, but nourishes a keen expectation of regaining her lost
+estate, and grits her teeth, in the mean while, with fiery impatience.
+She points, and with reason, to the fact that the Slavs—Czechs,
+Slovaks, and Moravians—easily outnumber the Hungarians; yet Hungary
+is free, and she in bondage. And so Bohemia, for all her exterior
+of gracious courtesy, is bitter and hard at heart; a people of a
+passionate, thwarted patriotism; a people that has suffered and been
+degraded, but that has never for a moment forgotten. Prague is an
+expression of all this; in her sullen, gloomy architecture; in the
+persistence of national types and characteristics; and peculiarly in
+the wild, reckless Moldau, which visualizes the traditional, savage
+intolerance that is bred in the bone of the fatalistic Slav.
+
+There are too many daws about for Prague to wear her heart on her
+sleeve, so while she bides her time she presents a smiling mask. It
+may sometimes be a rather weary smile, and the forests that engulf
+her are gloomy and sinister; but her skies are not always lowering
+and overcast, and the peace of her fatigue from the national struggle
+is profound. It is just this deep, brooding peace that appeals to the
+stranger within her gates; and along with it he senses here a wonderful
+charm and underlying subtility that invests this curious old city with
+a lambent play of the imagination.
+
+It was of Prague that Alexander von Humboldt said: “It is the most
+beautiful inland city I have ever seen.” And it must have been of some
+such spot that “R. L. S.” was mindful when he expressed the paradox
+that “any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is only
+in a few, and those highly favored, that we can pass a few hours
+agreeably.” Restfulness is surely one of the prime essentials of the
+“highly favored” few; and there is no restfulness at all comparable
+with that we feel in some venerated spot whose present hush and quiet
+is a reaction from its other days of fever and turmoil. One finds these
+qualities in Prague, whose calm and serenity seem doubly intense in
+contrast with its history of tumult and savagery and the hatred and
+violence that racked and convulsed it for hundreds of years. It has
+frequently been lightly disposed of as being an “out-of-the-way place”;
+but no place is more delightful than an “out-of-the-way” place, and
+particularly when it has the natural and architectural beauty of this
+one, or has been the theatre of such unusual and stirring occurrences.
+
+Had we but one hour to spend in Prague we should certainly choose the
+charmed one between four and five o’clock of an afternoon. The sunshine
+is then most languid and golden, and the day declines slowly over
+the castled tops of the Hradschin-crowned slope, and the lengthening
+shadows of towers and turrets creep out on the river, and the copper
+domes and ruddy tiles of the Neustadt glow in bright spots against the
+darkling green of the wooded hillsides. If one does not then feel a
+profound and elevating sense of tranquillity and translating beauty, it
+will be because he has eyes to see yet sees not.
+
+Since Prague rests under the imputation of being “out of the way,”—and
+even Shakespeare set this inland kingdom down as “a desert country
+near the sea,” and lost his compass completely in the shipwreck in
+the “Winter’s Tale” with Antigonus exclaiming: “Our ship hath touch’d
+upon the deserts of Bohemia”; and a confused mariner replying, “Aye,
+my lord; and fear we’ve landed in ill time,”—we may, perhaps, be
+pardoned for observing that in general appearance it is a wooded
+valley traversed in its full length by a swift, turbulent river, which
+follows a northerly course excepting where it bends sharply to the
+east in the very heart of the city. This stream, the Moldau, rushes
+along as if in desperate haste to throw itself into the Elbe, and
+seems to have the one idea, as it dashes through Prague, of getting
+done with its business and on its way at the earliest moment possible.
+It has scoured its islands into ovals, slashed the rocky bases of the
+hills, and continually assailed its bridges and quays. But through all
+its exhibitions of ill humor the Praguers have indulgently condoned
+and even extolled it; it was only when the beloved and venerated
+Karlsbrücke fell a partial victim to its violence, a dozen years ago,
+that patience ceased to be a virtue and the unnatural marauder was
+comprehensively anathematized with all the sibilant fury of the hissing
+tongue of the Czech. Speed apart, there is little to complain of with
+the Moldau; it is broad and of a pleasant deep blue, and the beauty it
+supplies to the setting of the city is supplemented by the importance
+of its traffic, the amusements on its many little wooded islands, and
+the delights of its boating and bathing. In a word, it is a noble
+stream—and none the less Bohemian, perhaps, for being a little proud
+and head-strong.
+
+As the afternoon sun lies heavy over Prague one notes with delight how
+snugly the old city nestles along the river and up the hillsides of
+the valley, and with what a natural and comfortable air; not at all as
+though trying, as newer cities do, to shoulder its suburbs out of the
+way. It seems a perfect type of the mediæval town, with buildings of
+solid stone of an agreeable and universal creamy tone, four-square
+and enduring. It abounds in quaint, high pitched roofs; in curious,
+turreted spires; in red tiles and green copper domes; and in objects of
+antique and archaic fascination. Shade trees are everywhere. Indeed,
+from the thickly wooded heights of the surrounding hills right down to
+the river quays the gray of the houses and the red and green of the
+roofs make beautiful color combinations with the feathery foliage.
+
+One stands on the old Karlsbrücke and looks upstream and there he
+sees the rocky heights of the Wyschehrad Hill on which the fair and
+wise Libussa reared her castle when she laid the foundations of the
+city, thirteen centuries ago, and which he will want to visit later to
+look over the fortifications and to study the glowing frescoes on the
+cloister walls of the Benedictine monastery of Emmaus. In the elbow of
+the Moldau, downstream, he will observe the old sections of Prague
+huddled together in cramped confusion, with no sign left of the ancient
+separating walls that once defined the original seven districts, though
+he is to learn, by and by, that the early names remain unchanged—the
+Aldstadt, and the Jewish Josephstadt, and around and above them the
+Neustadt, which, of course, from an American time-point, is really not
+“new” at all. On his left, along the river, he sees the Kleinseite
+spread out, and on the hillside above it that far-famed acropolis, the
+redoubtable Hradschin, with its dusty, barracks-like royal and state
+palaces, and the great bulk of the cathedral of St. Vitus rising out of
+it like some man-made mount. Such is the first bird’s-eye impression
+of Prague, set in its wooded slopes, stolid and softly colored.
+Later on one can scrape acquaintance with its rambling, flourishing,
+modern suburbs, to the eastward and downstream, and wrestle at his
+pleasure with such impressive nomenclature as Karolinenthal and
+Bubna-Holeschowitz.
+
+[Illustration: PRAGUE, THE CASTLE FROM THE OLD BRIDGE]
+
+Between four and five o’clock the visitor will find an especial
+pleasure in noting the activities that prevail in the several little
+green islands that fret the impetuous Moldau as it hurries through
+this “hundred-towered, golden Prague.” The dearest of these to the
+sentimental Czech is bright Sophien-Insel, that you could almost leap
+onto from the stone coping of the neighboring Kaiser-Franzbrücke. It
+always wears a gay and inviting appearance, with café tables set under
+fine old oaks, but precisely at four, summer afternoons, the leader of
+its military band lifts his baton and launches some crashing prelude,
+and the noisy company instantly stills and with nervously tapping
+fingers and glowing eyes abandons itself to that music passion which is
+the deepest and most intense expression of the Bohemian temperament. It
+gives the _dilettante_ a new conception of the power of this inspiring
+art to observe the significant and varying expressions that play over
+the faces of a Prague audience under its influence. He witnesses
+then the profoundest stirring of the Slavic nature and the moving of
+emotional depths beyond the conception of the reserved and impassive
+Anglo-Saxon. Especially is this so when the music is of a national
+character, such as the “Ma Vlast” symphonic poems of Smetana, or a
+Slavic dance of Dvorak’s. These Bohemian masters, with their fellow
+countryman, Fibich, constitute a trinity that is reverenced in their
+native land to an extent that almost passes belief, and that has done
+so much in making Prague one of the foremost centres of Europe.
+
+The music from the Sophien-Insel floats down the river to our
+vantage-point on Karlsbrücke, mellowed and softened, and contributes
+just the right pleasing note to the agreeable mood these picturesque
+surroundings excite. The ponderous, antique old structure on which
+we stand has the appearance of some full-page color illustration for
+a charming Middle-Age romance. For half a millennium it has dug its
+broad arches into the bottom of the Moldau, stoutly defiant of flood
+or storm. Its massive buttresses are crowned with heroic statues so
+deeply revered that pilgrimages are made by the faithful to pay their
+devotions before them. For a third of a mile this old veteran strides
+the stream, and at each end he lifts an amazing mediæval tower well
+worth a journey to stare at. These ponderous structures, weathered
+by centuries of storm to a rich brownish black, are pierced by a
+deep Gothic archway through which the street traffic pours all day.
+Their sides are decorated with colonnades and traceries, armorial
+bearings and statues of ancient heroes of the city, and their tops
+are incredible creations of slender turrets and of pointed roofs so
+desperately precipitate that they seem like long narrow paving-stones
+tilted end to end.
+
+Catholic legend and ceremonial run riot on the old bridge. The statues
+are almost altogether of a religious character, and two of them,
+the Crucifixion Group and the bronze one of St. John Nepomuc, are
+practically never passed without the sign of the cross and the raising
+of hat or cap; in the case of the latter the devout will touch the
+tablet that marks the spot from which he is said to have been cast
+into the river, and then kiss their fingers and bless themselves. For
+St. John Nepomuc, of all the holy martyrs, was Prague’s very own. The
+legend is dramatic. Father John was the queen’s confessor, five hundred
+years ago, and when he declined to oblige the king by revealing what
+the queen had told under the seal of the confessional, his Majesty had
+him summarily cast into the Moldau, from just where we are standing at
+the centre of this bridge. The result was far from the expectations
+of the king, for not only was the poor priest preserved from sinking,
+but—which is quite as hard to believe of so swift a stream as this—he
+actually remained floating for four days at the very spot where he
+fell, and five bright stars hung above him all the while! When they
+took him out he was dead, and to this extent only did the king succeed.
+As was perfectly natural, the amazed Praguers could see nothing in
+all this but an astounding miracle; and when Catholicism had finally
+displaced the Protestantism that followed the Hussite wars for two
+hundred years, their clamor for the canonization of Father John
+eventually resulted in placing the name of St. John Nepomuc in the
+catalogue of Rome. Equipped with a saint all their own, they adroitly
+converted the statues of the Protestant John Huss, that stood here and
+there about town, into St. John Nepomucs by the simple expedient of
+adding a five-starred halo to each.
+
+Now, if to-day were the sixteenth of May, St. John Nepomuc’s special
+day, we should behold the greatest festival of all the year. An altar
+would be erected beside his statue, here on the bridge, and mass
+celebrated before enormous kneeling crowds. Bohemian peasants would
+flock into town from miles and miles around, in all the picturesque
+finery of the national dress, gala performances would be given at the
+theatres, an especial illumination of the city made at public expense,
+and fireworks displayed to-night on Schutzen-Insel. It would be an
+orderly celebration, too, for the Czechs are more fond of dancing than
+drinking; and religious enthusiasm would be practically universal, for
+Prague, which for two centuries was exclusively Protestant, now numbers
+at least nine Catholics out of every ten of its people.
+
+As we look about us this afternoon we derive a vivid consciousness
+of being very far from home, set down in an environment that is, for
+Europe, oddly foreign and unfamiliar. The soft, sibilant prattle of
+the Czechish speech is heard on every hand, and the names on cars and
+corners are outlandish to us, with their profusion of consonants and
+curious accent marks like our o and v. One sees a great disproportion
+in numbers between the German and Czechish population; only thirteen
+to the hundred are said to be German, but in the opinion of Bohemians
+that is too many, for the stubborn struggle for the existence of the
+old national speech and spirit against the threatening usurpation
+of the Teutonic invaders is a real matter of life and death. As we
+watch the crowds throng along the bridge the prevalence of the Slavic
+type is very noticeable: short of body, heavy of head, and with high
+cheek bones and coarse features. The general expression is one of
+settled melancholy, bred of their peculiar fatalism. Having heard the
+“Bohemian Girl” and read the foundationless libels of popular French
+literature, one looks about for gypsies; he will be lucky if he finds
+one. Bohemia, as he should have known, is one of the leading industrial
+countries of Europe, and Prague is made up of hard-working, skillful
+mechanics. Energy and resolution are stamped on these serious, rugged
+faces; on the powerful men, the tall, strong women, and even on the
+little black-eyed children. And they can do many worthy things well:
+they market the country’s rich coal and iron deposits, make garnets
+to perfection, and manufacture beet-sugar by thousands of tons. Who
+has not heard of Bohemian glass, or Pilsener beer? And shall we
+belittle the resourcefulness of Bohemia, with the prosperous resorts of
+Karlsbad and Marienbad well within the western boundary of the Böhmer
+Wald? If this does not convince, one has only to run over to Dresden,
+seventy-five miles away, which he can reach by rail in four hours at
+an outlay of but eight florins, and ask any one where the finest farm
+produce comes from and what section yields the best fruit and honey,
+butter and eggs, milk and cheese.
+
+If now we can manage to look away from the bridge and its crowds,
+we shall observe that the afternoon activities of the river-life of
+Prague are manifold and highly interesting. There is a prodigious
+bustling about of longshoremen on the fine, broad quays, and boats of
+many descriptions and diversified cargoes are laboriously struggling
+upstream or drifting guardedly down. From time to time huge, unwieldy
+rafts pass along to the din of vigorous shouting and hysterical
+warnings. Bathers at the riverside establishments are adding their
+share of laughter and frolic, their diversions watched with vast
+amusement by the afternoon idlers loitering along the embankments. On
+our right the shaded walks and trim lawns of the popular Rudolfs-Quai
+are comfortably filled with a leisurely company of promenaders and of
+nursemaids airing their charges. All this contributes an agreeable note
+of homeliness and contentment and seems eminently in harmony with the
+prevailing serenity and peace of the surrounding groves. There is at
+hand a little chain footbridge which they call the Kettensteg, and in a
+beautiful clump of lindens at its end rise the sculptured porticoes of
+the classic Rudolfinum, Prague’s noble home of the arts and industries.
+Enter it, and you find whole halls devoted to the work of Bohemian
+artists, with the school of old Theodoric of Prague represented in
+surprising completeness, an entire cabinet filled with the engravings
+of that famous Praguer, Wenzel Hollar, and many of the most beautiful
+paintings of such celebrated Bohemians as Gabriel Max, Václav Brozǐk
+and Josef Mánes.
+
+With artistic bridges arching the river in whichever direction you
+look, with music and soft voices welling up from the gay islands, and
+with a full and virile life at cry along the quays, you find yourself
+about as far removed as possible from the atmosphere of Longfellow’s
+“Beleaguered City”:—
+
+    “Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream,
+      With the wan moon overhead,
+    There stood, as in an awful dream,
+      The army of the Dead.”
+
+Assuredly, there is no “army of the dead” at this hour beside the
+Moldau, whatever there may be under the “wan moon” in a poet’s eye.
+On the contrary, there is an army of the living, a quarter-million of
+them, and it marches without resting, day in and day out, along the
+Graben and the stately Wenzels-Platz, and through the venerable Grosser
+Ring and the narrow, crooked alleys of old Josephstadt.
+
+Walk east across Karlsbrücke, pass under the Gothic arch of the
+somnolent Aldstadt Tower, with the stony statue of Karl IV on your
+left, and you will shortly emerge on the Grosser Ring and can settle
+the matter for yourself. This fantastic Ring is the oldest and most
+famous square of the city, still preserving its ancient appearance.
+You find it an irregular quadrilateral, surrounded by quaint, gloomy,
+colonnaded houses, churches, and dilapidated palaces. There towers
+in its centre a sombre memorial column, called the Mariensäule,
+commemorating Prague’s liberation from the Swedes at the close of
+the Thirty Years’ War. The very first thing to catch the eye is the
+singular Teynkirche—the old Gothic church where John Huss so often
+preached, where the astronomer Tycho Brahe lies entombed in red marble,
+and in whose shadows, through five centuries, many of the bloodiest
+events of the city had their inception and execution. The influence of
+Huss on the Europe of his day was so great and has continued so long
+that it is hard to realize that he had only reached his forty-sixth
+year when the Council of Constance sent him and his friend, Jerome of
+Prague, to the stake. The old Teynkirche, where he so often attacked
+the doctrines of Rome, still rears its battered and darkened bulk
+from behind a melancholy row of colonnaded houses and gazes solemnly
+and patiently over them at the noisy Ring, its lofty spires curiously
+clustered with airy turrets like hornets’ nests on some old tree.
+Directly opposite, the modern Gothic Rathaus shoulders up to the
+moldering tower of its predecessor whose famous clock has delighted
+its thousands with the surprising things the automatic figures do
+when the hours and quarters roll around. Just at hand, a portion of
+the old Erkerkapelle still stands in excellent preservation, and you
+could not find more beautiful Gothic windows in all Prague, nor finer
+canopied saints nor more richly sculptured coats of arms. Before this
+building—a place of hideous history—the best blood of the city was
+spilled after the fall of Bohemian independence at the fateful battle
+of the White Hill, three centuries ago, when twenty-seven nobles
+were butchered here on the scaffold. A dozen years passed, and again
+blood soaked this earth, with the stony-hearted Wallenstein executing
+eleven of his chief officers for alleged cowardice at the battle of
+Lutzen. Prague still shows the palace of Wallenstein, and those of the
+other two famous generals of his period, Gallas and Piccolomini. The
+Clam-Gallas Palace is just at hand, in the Hussgasse, distinguished for
+its beautiful portal flanked with colossal caryatids and sculptured
+urns, and surmounted by a marble balustrade wrought with the perfection
+of life. A final note in the Old-World charm of the Grosser Ring is
+contributed by the ancient Kinsky Palace, adjoining the Teynkirche,
+in the elaborate baroque architecture despised of Mr. Ruskin. People
+in the manner and seeming of to-day walk and talk, barter and sell
+under the nodding brows of these historic buildings, but the visitor
+stands among them unconscious of their noisy presence in the spell such
+storied surroundings cast on every phase of fancy and imagination.
+
+There is a peculiar fascination about aimless rambles in Prague. Modern
+improvements have come, of course, but many an old and rare landmark
+has been reverently preserved, with the result that you can scarcely
+turn a corner or cross a square without coming face to face with
+some fantastic and blackened architectural fragment that holds you
+spellbound with wonder and delight. Whole sections, indeed, are of such
+a character; as you would find were you to fare forth from the Grosser
+Ring and seek adventures by crossing the Kettensteg and invading the
+region beyond the Rudolfinum. With almost the suddenness of tumbling
+into a river you would find yourself groping, even at this bright hour
+of the afternoon, in the black and twisting mazes of the old Jewish
+Ghetto that still goes by the name of Josephstadt. Here you have at
+once all the detail and color of a romance of the crusades. Everything
+appears aged and eccentric. The time-weary, saddened, ramshackle houses
+project their upper stories feebly and seek to rest their wrinkled
+foreheads on one another; tortuous, winding alleys that you can
+almost span with your outstretched arms reel giddily all ways from a
+straight line, plodding wearily uphill and sliding helplessly down. On
+all sides there seems to be a general feeling that nothing matters,
+that everything comes by accident or caprice. Over the frowzy heads of
+slovenly children quarreling in the doorways, glimpses are to be had of
+dark and filthy interiors, from which foul odors escape to the street.
+Long-coated, unkempt patriarchs of Israel lope solemnly by, with
+rounded shoulders and hands clasped behind; and if you follow in their
+wake you will sooner or later arrive at a curious, melancholy Rathaus
+that is a rare jumble of architectural orders and has an extraordinary
+steeple that might once have done time on a Chinese temple. This very
+inclusive structure, persisting in its oddities to the end, makes a
+great point of staring down at the gaping crowds out of a big belfry
+clock that has one dial Hebrew and one Christian. But a single marvel
+is as nothing in this old wonderland where, as Alice would have
+remarked, things become “curiouser and curiouser.” If your eyes popped
+at the Rathaus what will they do at the gaunt, barnlike synagogue next
+door! Here is the thing that every visitor to Prague goes straight to
+see. Its early history is lost in legends, but you will be disposed to
+credit them all—even to that one about the Prague Jews fleeing from
+Jerusalem to escape the persecutions of Titus—once you have seen its
+doleful walls and breakneck roof, and have passed through the narrow
+black doorway into that shadowy tomb of an interior. Brass lamps
+depend by long chains from the smoky ceiling, but they only intensify
+the gloom with their feeble light and deepen the feeling of creepy
+depression. Visitors are told that during the horrors of the Hussite
+wars this black hole was literally packed with the bloody corpses of
+Jews and that, in a bitter spirit of defiance, no attempt was made for
+three hundred years to efface the frightful stains. Little wonder that
+the Prague Jews evolved out of their hatred an ancient malediction that
+ran: “May your head be as thick as the walls of the Hradschin, your
+body grow as big as the city of Prague; may your limbs wither away to
+birds’ claws, and may you flee around the world for a thousand years!”
+
+It is like escaping from a sick-bed to come out of this chamber of
+horrors and cross the street to the quiet and hush of the wonderful
+old Ghetto cemetery. Here we have another of the “sights” of the
+Josephstadt. In the refreshing coolness of its elder-trees one looks
+about on as extraordinary a three acres as can be found anywhere in
+all Europe. The Jews insist that they have buried here for twelve or
+fourteen hundred years, and inscriptions can be found that date back
+at least half that far. By the simple process of spreading new layers
+of earth, this plot has been packed with graves six deep; and all
+that was accomplished a hundred and fifty years ago, the cemetery not
+having been in use since the middle of the eighteenth century. The
+closeness of the black, mossy tombstones, and their toppled and huddled
+look, suggest the troubled shouldering of some gigantic, ghoulish mole
+at work deep down in the horror-crowded darkness underground. The
+ancient tribal insignia of Israel are found graven on these tottering
+slabs,—the Hands of Aaron, the Cup of Levi, the Double Triangle of
+David, the Stag, the Fish, etc.,—and here and there you come across
+those little piles of stones heaped on graves that mark a Jewish act of
+reverence for the resting-place of some long-buried ancestor.
+
+Hold to a generally southern direction in your afternoon stroll through
+the narrow Ghetto alleys, and shortly you will meet with a fine reward
+in the shape of a face-to-face contemplation of one of Prague’s most
+cherished antiquities, the Pulverturm. They may have once stored powder
+here, as the name implies, or they may not; but almost anything looks
+to have been possible to this sturdy, brown survivor of the Middle
+Ages, under whose broad Gothic archway the twentieth-century crowds
+are passing day and night. Set solidly down in the thickest stream
+of traffic, it has the look of those unconquerable obstructions that
+have to be tunneled through. It looms above you, a great, dark, dusty
+mass, out-of-time in every particularity of design and decoration.
+Stubbornness and defiance are expressed in every line; and with its
+atmosphere of drowsy aloofness and mystery there is such an element
+of loneliness among such modern surroundings that one could almost
+believe he sometimes hears the old veteran sigh. Certainly you would
+say it is brooding over memories centuries dead, so incongruous and
+distrait is its seeming, so anachronous are its whimsical turrets,
+fantastic roof, statues, arms, and sculptured traceries. This
+impression of isolation is enhanced as one reflects that the most
+ultra-modern of Prague’s new buildings all stand within easy range,
+could one of the Pulverturm’s ancient archers take up a position in any
+of those lofty turrets and wing an arrow from his stout crossbow toward
+what quarter of the heavens he chose.
+
+When you have passed under the arch of the Pulverturm, you have entered
+the Graben, and so reached the business heart of the city. The Graben
+has nothing to-day to suggest the “Ditch” that its derivative source
+implies, unless you fancifully regard it as a moat of the modern
+commercial ramparts. On the contrary, it presents a busy array of all
+the leading hotels, shops, restaurants, and cafés. Overhead-trolley
+cars splutter along it, and you see gray stone buildings of irregular
+roof-lines with skylight dormers in the tiles, and Venetian blinds in
+the windows, narrow sidewalks decorated in mosaic designs, and active
+throngs of strong-featured men, and bareheaded, vigorous women whose
+chief pride of dress concerns itself with capacious aprons elaborately
+embroidered. Were you to visit the second-story cafés, whose gay
+window-boxes look so inviting from the street, you would find games of
+chess and checkers in progress at this hour, and more than one merchant
+who had stolen from his shop to have a look at the “Prager Tagblatt”
+over a glass of Pilsener or “three fingers” of the plum brandy they
+call _slivovitz_ or a dram of _tshai_—which is tea and rum—or a cup
+of _tee_—which is just plain tea and cream. Coffee and chocolate, of
+course, would be found in general demand.
+
+One passes out of the Graben into the fine boulevard of the
+Wenzelsplatz, and at once exchanges bustle and uproar for the quiet
+and dignity of the most beautiful and stately avenue of the city. It
+is broad and well-paved, with buildings of elaborate design, with
+shop fronts protected by bright awnings and with fine shade-trees
+every few yards along its entire length. At the corner of the Stadt
+Park, one finds a beautiful cascade fountain, and beside it a noble
+building which is the centre of all that is best and most intense in
+the new movement for the reviving and vitalizing of the national spirit
+among Bohemians—the new Bohemian Museum. Were you to enter it you
+would doubtless be astonished to see how many souvenirs of Bohemian
+history have already been assembled there,—autographs and documents,
+ancient musical instruments, art objects, flails of the Hussites, and
+scientific collections. Such is the intellectual Bohemia of to-day.
+
+From this pleasant stroll one wends his way back to the Karlsbrücke,
+and as he passes the buildings that still remain of the ancient
+famous university, thoughts are kindled of the wonderful renown this
+institution had, six centuries ago, when it was easily the foremost
+educational institution of the world. Fifteen thousand students, from
+every quarter of the earth, gathered to hear its celebrated savants,
+and the revels and achievements of those days have gone down in prose
+and rhyme. Five thousand students still attend, two thirds of them
+Czechs and the others German; but the revelry of to-day is largely the
+bitter and bruising encounters that are continually arising between
+these conflicting hot-heads. The intellectual impulse is strong in
+Prague. It has poly-technic institutes, art schools, and learned
+societies, and one of the most famous conservatories of music in the
+whole of Europe.
+
+The west bank of the Moldau, the Kleinseite district, was royalty’s
+region in the olden time when Bohemian kings and queens dwelt in the
+huge Hradschin on the ridge of the hill. Seen from the Karlsbrücke,
+toward five o’clock, the long slope rises toward the declining sun
+with many more suggestions, even now, of the pomp and circumstance
+that have departed than of the modernism that has taken their place.
+There is a dreary and saddening array of closed and boarded palaces,
+arcaded and many-windowed, whose owners are rich and powerful Bohemian
+nobles with a preference for the gayeties and frivolities of the court
+life of Vienna. One regards with especial interest the long, rambling
+one of Wallenstein, to make room for which one hundred houses had to
+be torn down, where this rival of royalty retired in the interval of
+imperial disfavor and held magnificent court with hundreds of followers
+and attendants. Among the many chambers of that great honeycomb was
+one equipped as an astrological cabinet—for Wallenstein always had
+faith in his star. How vividly it recalls the Schiller dramas and the
+operations of the uncanny Ceni! “Such a man!” exclaims a character at
+the conclusion of “Wallensteins Tod.” Born a Protestant, he well-nigh
+became their exterminator; turned Jesuit, the Jesuits distrusted and
+hated him. With his sword he made and unmade kings and carved out
+principalities for himself—and yet he was but fifty-one years old at
+the time of his assassination!
+
+Like an aged soldier nodding in his armchair in the sun, the
+Wallenstein Palace, once passion-rocked and treachery-haunted, basks
+this afternoon in an atmosphere of the intensest calm and peace.
+To ramble through it is to learn history from a participant. One
+courtyard, in particular, is so serene and lovely as to be really
+unforgettable. One entire side of this enclosure is a lofty, echoing
+_loggia_ three stories high, with arching spans for a roof supported on
+graceful, towering columns. Within the _loggia_ are heavy sculptured
+balustrades, and a broad flight of marble steps flanked by huge stone
+urns leads to a beautiful open space of soft lawns bordered with simple
+flowers. It was a favorite resort of Wallenstein’s, and he called it
+his _sala terrina_. In its present mellow and half-deserted beauty it
+is a place for a poet to dream away a life in.
+
+Staring gloomily down on the Kleinseite, and set solidly far above it
+on a precipitous hill, the rugged old Hradschin, Prague’s acropolis,
+warms into mild ruddy tones in the afternoon sun. I have said it
+reminds one of a barracks, such an enormous, rambling affair as it
+is; though its commanding situation and impressive proportions would
+immediately suggest to a stranger some more consequential employment
+in other days. Undoubtedly it is the most striking feature of Prague.
+One might think it a solid architectural mass, as seen from the
+Karlsbrücke, but on closer inspection it resolves itself into a series
+of separate structures falling into irregular groups, but which, taken
+together, composed the setting of the imperial court during the long
+period of Bohemia’s independence. That splendid fragment, the vast
+cathedral of St. Vitus, supplies a worthy centrepiece; and is full of
+interest, too, with its rich Gothic windows, chapel walls set with
+precious stones, marble tombs of the Bohemian kings, and the wonderful
+silver monument to St. John Nepomuc. Indeed, the whole Hradschin
+abounds in rich surprises. Such, for instance, is the venerable church
+of St. George, awkward and archaic, which has stood for nine hundred
+years and is the sole memorial in Bohemia of the earliest period of
+Romanic architecture. Every one, of course, hurries to see the rude
+royal palace of the Hofburg, on the edge of an adjacent steep hill,
+from the windows of whose Kanzlei Zimmer the Imperial Councillors were
+“defenestrated” and the Thirty Years’ War, in consequence, precipitated
+upon the troubled states of Europe. And then there is the archbishop’s
+palace, across the quadrangle from the Hofburg, in whose courtyard the
+church authorities impotently burned the two hundred Wycliffe books
+that John Huss had loaned them with the challenge to read and, if they
+could, refute. Two grim towers on the eastern extremity, the Daliborka
+and the Black Tower, have no end of creepy legends of tortures and
+prison horrors. The former takes its name from a romantic knight,
+Dalibor, who is said to have been long confined there and of whom and
+his solacing violin we hear at pleasant length in Smetana’s opera of
+that name. One of the most curious sights of the Hradschin is the low,
+drawn-out Loretto church, with a maximum of frontage and a minimum
+of depth, like city seminaries for young ladies. Among the red tiles
+of its steep roof, giant stone saints perform miracles of precarious
+footing, and out of the centre of the façade, on a base of colossal
+spirals, rises an antique belfry spire set with domes and turrets
+and bearing aloft a huge clock dial like a burnished shield. Surely,
+somewhere in this Hradschin-wonderland occurred the unrecounted events
+of that much-interrupted narrative of the “King of Bohemia and his
+Seven Castles,” which Trim tried so hard to tell to Uncle Toby Shandy;
+and may we not be confident that the charming Prince Florizel, whose
+strange adventures Stevenson has so gracefully recounted, once lived
+and courted perils in these romantic surroundings!
+
+It is to be hoped that every visitor will have more than one hour in
+Prague; and then, of course, he will want to go up to the Hradschin
+and loiter through and about it at his leisure. He will find large and
+beautiful gardens where he can rest under noble trees and enjoy an
+inspiring view of the city in the pleasant companionship of statuary
+and fountains. When he has exhausted this viewpoint he can secure quite
+another from the colonnaded verandas of the Renaissance Belvedere; or,
+perhaps better still, he will journey out to the picturesque Abbey of
+Strahow, embowered in blooming orchards that are vocal with blackbirds,
+and from its yellow stuccoed walls look down on the dense forests of
+the Laurenzberg sweeping in billowy green to the very banks of the
+Moldau.
+
+At this hour a sharp point of light, seen from the observation tower
+on the summit of the Hasenberg, marks the location of a little white
+church on a distant hilltop—and when you have been told all about
+what happened there at the fatal battle of the White Hill you will
+have listened to the bitterest chapter in the whole history of Bohemia
+and will know how the national life of this kingdom gasped itself out,
+three centuries ago, in the panic and rout of the “Winter King’s”
+ill-managed soldiery before the fierce infantry of Bavaria. There fell
+the state won by the flails of a fanatical peasantry whose sonorous
+war-hymn, “Ye Who Are God’s Warriors,” had so often struck terror into
+the ranks of the finest armies of Europe. Those were the men whom
+the furious Ziska led—Ziska, the squat and one-eyed, the friend and
+avenger of Huss; “John Ziska of the Chalice, Commander in the Hope
+of God of the Taborites.” Such was the terror in which this dread
+chieftain was held by his foes that they feared him even after his
+death and declared that his skin had been stretched for drum-heads to
+summon his followers on to victory.
+
+Since the battle of the White Hill there has been little for Prague in
+the way of war except sieges and captures; and it has mattered little
+to her whether it was Maria Theresa come to be crowned, or Frederick
+the Great come to destroy, or the Swedes of Gustavus Adolphus come
+to plague and offend. Suffering has been her regular portion. During
+the Thirty Years’ War alone, Bohemia’s population declined from four
+millions to fewer than seven hundred thousand.
+
+The stranger on the Karlsbrücke will turn from thoughts of Ziska’s
+peasants to regard with increased interest the occasional specimen
+of the countryman who strides past along the bridge with no
+embarrassment at appearing in the streets of his capital in the costume
+of his nation. Behold him in his high boots, tight buff trousers,
+well-embroidered, blue bolero jacket with many buttons, broad lapels
+and embroidered cuffs, his soft shirt puffed out like a pigeon, and
+the jaunty Astrachan cap cocked to one side. And there, too, marches
+his wife; boots laced high, bodice bright and abbreviated, petticoats
+short and broad and covered by a wide-bordered apron, her arms bare to
+the shoulders, and her headdress of white linen very starchy and stiff.
+Sometimes one passes wearing a hat that suggests Spain, but he, too, as
+they all do, wears the tight trousers and the close-fitting knee boots.
+In time one learns to distinguish the Slovaks and Moravians by their
+long, sleeveless white coats, tight blue trousers, and white jackets
+with lapels and cuffs embroidered in red.
+
+One hears many interesting things about these peasants. Throughout
+the year, it is said, they fare frugally on black bread and a cheese
+made of sheeps’ milk, to which is added an occasional trout from the
+mountain streams. The great age some of them attain speaks well for the
+diet. Strangers who go up into the hills to stalk chamois and have a
+go at the big game come back with surprising stories of the inherited
+deference that is still paid in the country to caste. They will tell
+you that the peasant still kisses the hand of the lord of the soil.
+The Praguer thinks highly of his country brother, though he finds a
+vast amusement in observing his rustic antics when he comes to town on
+St. John Nepomuc’s Day and shuffles about the streets, wide-eyed and
+gaping, after the manner of _rus in urbe_ the world over.
+
+Curious stories are told of peasant customs. Christmas is their day
+of days, and preparations for its proper observance are made long in
+advance. They believe it to be a season when evil spirits are powerless
+to injure and may even be made to aid. When the great day arrives, the
+cottages are scrupulously cleaned, fresh straw laid on the earthen
+floor, and the entire household assembled for a processional round
+of the outbuildings. In the course of this ceremonial parade, beans
+are carefully dropped into cracks and chinks of the buildings, with
+elaborate incantations for protection against fires. Bread and salt
+are offered to every animal on the place. The unmarried daughters are
+sprinkled with honey-water to insure them faithful and sweet-natured
+husbands. The family drink of celebration is the plum-distilled
+_slivovitz_.
+
+What effective use the great national composers of Bohemia—Smetana,
+Dvorak, and Fibich—have made of the native melodies and costumes!
+Smetana, a friend and protégé of Liszt,—the master utilizer of
+Hungarian folk-themes,—was determined that Bohemia, too, should
+have music of a distinctively national character; and in his eight
+operas and six symphonic poems, as well as in his beautiful stringed
+quartette, the “Carnival of Prague,” he abundantly realized his
+ambition. There is no more popular opera played in Prague to-day than
+his “Bartered Bride.” One hears a great deal of Smetana in talking
+with the people of this city; of his poverty and sadness, his final
+deafness, and of how, when fame at last crowned him so completely, he
+was dying in an asylum here. Music is a favorite topic of conversation
+in Prague. A violin player in one of the local theatre orchestras was
+no less a person than the great Dvorak, a pupil of Smetana’s; and he,
+too, added to Bohemian musical glory with his Slavonic rhapsodies and
+dances and the splendid overture that he constructed on the folk-melody
+“Kde Domov Muj.” There was a sort of Bach-like foundation for all these
+composers in the early litanies of the talented Bishop of Prague. The
+Czech temperament finds its natural expression in music. It is even
+insisted that their most popular movement, the polka, was invented by a
+Bohemian servant girl.
+
+Certainly there has been no lack of beautiful legendary material on
+which to construct effective compositions. These traditional stories
+are all full of sadness and superstition, and they always revolve about
+simple, natural elements—the rain, the mountains, the valleys, ghosts,
+and wild hunters, and, above all, that most recurrent and universal of
+themes, love.
+
+Could we win favor with some old Praguer this afternoon and entice him
+into the sunny corner of Karl IV’s monument place, beside the bridge,
+we should close out our hour with many a captivating and romantic
+story that would alone have made our visit well worth while. Such, for
+example, is the legend of the “Spinning Girl.” Deserted by her lover,
+she wove a wonderful shroud threaded with moonbeams, and in this she
+was buried, and by its magic she appeared to him on his wedding night
+and lured him to leap to his death in the river. And there is the story
+of the “Wedding Shirt”: A girl implores the Virgin either to let her
+die or restore her absent lover who, unknown to her, has been dead some
+time. The Virgin bows from the holy picture, and forthwith the pallid
+lover appears and conducts his sweetheart by a midnight journey to the
+spot where his body lies buried. Thereupon ensues a desperate struggle
+by fiends and ghouls to capture the soul of the girl, who is finally
+rescued by the interposition of the Virgin to whom in her terror she
+appeals. The wedding shirts that she had brought as her bridal portion
+are found scattered in fragments by the sinister spirits on the
+surrounding graves. The flight of the maid and her ghostly lover is
+vividly depicted at length, and is expressed, in translation, by such
+lurid lines as—
+
+    “O’er the marshes the corpse-lights shone,
+    Ghastly blue they glimmered alone.”
+
+One of the most romantic of these legends is the “Golden
+Spinning-Wheel.” A king loses his way while hunting and stops for a
+drink at a peasant’s cottage. There he finds a marvelously beautiful
+girl, to whom he eagerly offers himself in marriage. This girl is an
+orphan, with a stepmother and stepsister who are cruel and jealous.
+Under pretense of accompanying her to the king’s castle they lure
+her into a black forest and slay her, taking great pains to conceal
+her identity by removing and carrying with them her eyes, hands,
+and feet. They then proceed to the castle and the wicked daughter
+successfully impersonates the good one, whom she closely resembles.
+Seven days of wedding festivities ensue, at the end of which the king
+is called away to the wars. In the mean while a mysterious hermit—a
+heavenly messenger in disguise—takes up the dead body in the forest,
+dispatches his lad to the castle and secures the eyes, hands, and feet
+by bartering for them a golden spinning-wheel, a golden distaff, and a
+magic whirl. Thus equipped, he miraculously restores the girl to life
+and limb. When the king returns from the wars he invites his false
+bride to spin for him with her new golden wheel, and forthwith the
+magic instrument sings aloud the whole miserable story. The furious
+king rushes to the forest, finds his real sweetheart, and installs her
+in his castle, while the murderers are mutilated as she had been, and
+cast to the wild wolves.
+
+It may be thought that I have gone somewhat out of my allotted way in
+taking such notice as I have of the superstitions, customs, and music
+passion of the Bohemians, but I cannot believe that a satisfactory
+idea of Prague can be had in this, or any other hour, without some
+conception of the fundamental traits that so powerfully sway this
+people. For the real significance of the city lies deeper than its
+surface-showing of wooded hillsides sown with quaint buildings and
+a broad blue river rushing under many bridges; it is its peculiar
+raciness of the soil that underlies the Czech’s mad devotion to his
+capital. Expressing, as only Prague does, so much that is dear and
+beautiful to him, it centres in itself the most burning and passionate
+interests of the race. Without some knowledge of this desperate
+attachment one would fail utterly to grasp the force and truth of such
+a fine observation as Mr. Arthur Symons has made on the devotion of the
+Bohemian to this city: “He sees it, as a man sees the woman he loves,
+with her first beauty; and he loves it, as a man loves a woman, more
+for what she has suffered.”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+SCHEVENINGEN
+
+5 P.M. TO 6 P.M.
+
+
+Nurtured in the salt sadness of the sea, Scheveningen is a Whistler
+nocturne. Its prevailing and distinctive tones are neutral and elusive.
+There are, of course, days when the sun is as clear and powerful here
+as elsewhere, but more often it is obscured; then the sky becomes
+pearly, the sea opalescent, the shore drab and dun. Presently a thin
+fog drifts in, or vapors steal over the trees from the inland marshes,
+and all tints are rapidly neutralized into a common dimness of that
+vague and sentimental mistland so dear to the heart of the painter.
+This is the characteristic suspended color note of the average day at
+Scheveningen. It harmonizes to perfection with the sentiment of the
+environment and invests the region with a marvelous charm—peculiar,
+distinctive, and of the finest dignity.
+
+The power of Scheveningen’s attraction, the force of its appeal,
+lies largely in its grim aloofness and self-sufficiency. It is
+unsympathetic, discouraging. It consistently dominates its visitors,
+and, indeed, with an easy insolence and indifference. Wealth and
+fashion may abide with it for a few days, under tolerance, but the
+impression of the temporary and migratory character of their sojourn
+is always present. Undistracted, the fierce and gaunt sea assails
+the stark and surly shore, and the grim fishermen stand by and have
+their toll of both. Of the presence of the strangers they are all but
+unaware. In a brief day the incongruous invaders will have gone, but
+this relentless warfare will continue unabated. All the way from Helder
+to the Hook glistening seas will hiss over the flat beaches, snarling
+and biting at the shoulders of the dunes. All through the long, bitter
+winter, without an instant’s intermission, the struggle will go on. It
+is, consequently, of the very heart of the charm of the place that one
+has the feeling of intruding on battle; of tolerated propinquity to
+Titanic contenders.
+
+Loafing at Scheveningen is the apotheosis of idleness. The strong wind
+stimulates, the broad beaches delight, the solemn sea inspires. To
+this must be added the sense of strong contrasts. It emphasizes the
+impression of having dropped, for a time, out of the familiar monotony
+of Life’s treadmill; of being away from home; of both resting and
+recreating. It is present to the eyes in the eloquent disproportion
+between the vast Kurhaus and the diminutive homes of the villagers;
+in the incongruity of Parisian finery invading the savage haunts of
+the gull and the curlew. In the novel and bizarre activities of the
+fisher-folk, as in their theatrical surroundings as well, one finds
+just the right touch of the picturesque and the unfamiliar to complete
+the full realization of _dolce far niente_.
+
+Of the fabled monsters of the wild North Sea the imaginative man will
+believe he sees one certain survivor in that languid sea-serpent of
+a pier—the “Jetée Königin Wilhelmina”—that stretches its delicate
+length a quarter mile over the waves from off the drab sand dunes of
+Scheveningen. Its pavilion-crowned head snuggles flatly on the water.
+In the afternoon and evening, when its orchestra is playing, one
+fancies the monster is actually singing. At five o’clock, precisely,
+we have its last drowsy utterance as it drops off into a three-hours’
+nap—quite as Fafner, in the opera, yawns at Alberich and mutters
+“lasst mich schlafen!” It must be admitted it is a highly pleasing song
+he sings,—a Waldteufel waltz, more than likely,—and we come in time
+to recognize in it the closing number of the _matinée musicale_. And
+then, like Jonah’s captor, he wearies of his living contents; and we
+see them emerge by hundreds, scathless and unafraid, gay with parasols
+and immaculate of raiment, and pick their way leisurely along his back
+until they have rejoined their friends in the voluble company that
+crowds the cafés of the Kurhaus. In a moment more the abandoned monster
+is fast asleep; which, by a familiar association of ideas, is a sign to
+the multitudes on the beaches that surf-bathing ends in just one hour.
+
+Forthwith, there is a great bustling all along the shore side of the
+broad boulevard they call the “Standweg.” Bathers pick themselves up
+regretfully from sunbaths in the soft, powdery sand and trot down
+for a final dip in the surf, and those already in hasten to convert
+pleasure into work with increased energy and enthusiasm. To all such
+the implacable watchman shall come within the hour and beckon them out
+with stern and remorseless gestures, and the curious little wagons they
+call bath-cars will engulf each in turn and trundle them up out of the
+water, while the nervous old women who look after the bathing-suits
+will hover about with anxious eyes and lay violent hands on the
+dripping and discarded garments.
+
+[Illustration: SCHEVENINGEN BEACH]
+
+And now a tremendous clamor arises from all the little Holland
+children, who, from early morning, have been indulging the national
+instinct for dike-building and surrounding their mothers’ beach-chairs
+with scientific sand-bulwarks against the imaginary encroachments of
+the sea. For lo! their nurses approach, wonderful in white streamers
+and golden head-ornaments, and visions of the odious ante-prandial
+toilet rise like North Sea fogs in every youngster’s eye until even
+dinner itself appears abhorrent. Vagabond jugglers run through their
+final tricks, fold their carpets and steal away. Itinerant peddlers
+redouble their efforts and retire disgusted or jubilant as Fortune
+may have hidden or shown her face. More than ever does the sea front
+take on the appearance of a long apiary, with the hundreds of
+tall, shrouded beehives of beach-chairs emptying themselves of their
+comfortable occupants and being bundled by bee-men in white linen
+to safety for the night. And of all the odd sights of Scheveningen
+certainly no other will remain longer in mind than this curious,
+huddled colony of beach-chairs. What a pleasing and cheerful spectacle!
+Thronging the shore for quite a mile they contribute to the local
+picture decidedly its most jolly and fantastic feature. Between the
+beach-chairs and the boulevard there is a picket line of prim little
+peaked white tents, with the top of each precisely matching all the
+others in an edging of stiff, woodeny scallops; now that the flaps are
+thrown back and the sides rolled up, we see tables and chairs inside,
+with evidence of recent and jovial occupancy.
+
+To the eye of a man taking his comfort at the pretty little Café de
+la Plage on the Kurhaus terrace, all this bustle and late afternoon
+animation is bound to prove decidedly diverting. The broad, paved
+plazas that lie like carpets between him and the dunes are steadily
+filling with a considerable proportion of the thirty thousand
+Hollanders and Germans who summer here, and acquaintances are
+exchanging civilities and joining and taking leave of little groups
+in a way to make the general picture a brilliant, restless, and
+bewildering interweaving of color. As the open-air tables are filling,
+the activity of the waiters approaches hysteria, and the verandas
+and saloons of the ponderous Kurhaus begin to hum with the advent
+of the evening guests. Copies of “Le Courrier de Schéveningue” pass
+from hand to hand as the curious scan the lists of the latest arrivals
+or look over the various musical programmes of the evening. Out on
+the terraces, the ornate little newspaper kiosks attract groups of
+loiterers and gradually take on the character of social centres, and
+as these companies increase, one thinks of stock exchanges and the
+rallying about the trading standards. The matinée at the Seinpost
+concludes and out troops its audience to swell the human high tide.
+Bright bits of color are afforded by the blue uniforms and yellow
+facings of Holland infantrymen dotted here and there in the press. It
+is odd to see the usually arid and monotonous dunes grow brilliant with
+an artificial blossoming of fashionable millinery, where by nature
+there is nothing better than a scraggy growth of stringy heather, a
+little rosemary and broom, or the dry stem of the “miller.”
+
+It is at this hour, when “the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,”
+that the stolid natives array themselves and sally forth, like Delft
+tiles come to life, to the amused amazement of the visitors. Your
+Scheveningen man is wont to go about his duties, during the day,
+flopping vigorously in vivid red knickerbockers, voluminous as sails
+and quite as crudely patched; but when he makes a point of toilet he
+appears in gray homespun, the knickerbockers cut from the same pattern
+as the red ones, but there is a jacket closed up to the chin with two
+rows of large buttons, a red handkerchief twisted about the neck, a
+small cap with a glazed peak, and, of course, the wooden _klompen_.
+Such a display richly deserves attention, but what can the poor man
+expect when his wife appears in her full regalia! She, too, is shod
+with _klompen_,—though you have to take that on faith in view of the
+dozen or two of petticoats that balloon above them,—and her waist
+is a gay butterfly of variegated embroidery, while her headgear is
+about the most incredible thing conceivable. You might, at a distance,
+mistake them for bishops with their mitres tilted back at a rakish
+angle. Nor is it always of the one pattern. Usually it is a sort of
+long white cap of linen, embroidered at the edges; and the wearer adds
+a touch of coquetry in the shape of a long curl hanging at either side.
+But not infrequently you see a formidable contrivance of vastly more
+consequence; it consists, first, of a skullcap of polished gold or
+silver, technically known as a _hoofdijzer_, pierced at the top for
+ventilation and cut to leave room for the exposure of the forehead, and
+over this is drawn an elaborate cape of lace, with gold ornaments of
+spirals and squares dangling over the ears. This triumph of millinery
+never fails to elicit cries of delight from feminine visitors, or to
+set mere man to chuckling. It is most likely to form a part of the
+impressive gear of the nurses from the provinces, who have more money
+for such uses than the wives of the fishermen; and the things that are
+told to newcomers as to the significance of this or that ornament is
+the boldest advantage ever taken of innocent credulity. They undertook
+to tell me that you could distinguish between married, single, and
+engaged women by glancing at the ornaments—I wonder if you can! It is
+said that parents present their daughters with this headdress on the
+day of their confirmation; and that it is a fine sight to behold the
+array of them at kermesstime with their wearers, six or eight abreast,
+arm in arm, rushing down the streets in the odd dances peculiar to
+those festivals, droning monotonous tunes.
+
+To my way of thinking the unflagging industry of the Scheveningen women
+is a matter of quite as much note. One seldom sees them without their
+knitting, even when they are recreating, and as they stroll along,
+laughing and chatting together, their fingers, all unnoticed by them,
+are flashing with extraordinary speed like things of an independent
+volition. Many of the women wear no sleeves and take great pride in
+their strong, round arms; and this, I am told, is the case even in
+winter when they are cracked and purple from exposure to the cold.
+
+The faces of the elder fisher-folk are studies in wrinkles. Their
+eyes are brave and quizzical, but with a certain settled hardness,
+not perhaps to be unlooked-for in men and women who come of a stock
+that for five hundred years has forced even the savage North Sea to
+yield them a livelihood. They show next to nothing of humor, but
+rather a stern and weary hopelessness. Strong faces are these, hard,
+weather-beaten faces, but eloquent of tenacity and desperate courage.
+They have been called “the most poetic and original of all Hollanders.”
+They are grave, dignified, and self-reliant; and as they pass you by
+they show their invariable courtesy in a bow and a quiet “Goe ’n Dag.”
+One has only to see them to feel the propriety and justification of the
+boast in their national song:—
+
+    “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe,
+    Ben ick van Duijtschen Bloedt!”
+
+Fishermen naturally suggest ships, and if you glance down the beach
+you will usually see several of them drawn up to the edge of the
+water, with the red, white, and blue of Holland at the masthead.
+During the mid-summer season the fishing-fleet is away on the cruise
+for red herring off the coasts of Scotland, but there are always a
+few that could not get away, and so we have the famous Scheveningen
+_bom_ on its native strand. How the artists have delighted in these
+lumbering, flat-bottomed tubs, ponderous of mast and weathered of
+sail! Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, and the rest have familiarized
+the world with this fantastic and picturesque craft. Who would buy a
+painting of Scheveningen unless it showed a _bom_ or two hauled up on
+the beach? And that is precisely the _raison d’ être_ of the _bom_—it
+can be hauled up on the beach. Otherwise, what should a Scheveningen
+fisherman do with a boat, having no deep-water harbor at hand nor
+anchorage facility? There have, through the centuries, been many other
+styles of Dutch fishing-boats,—busses, loggers, hookers, sloops,
+pinken, etc.,—and at times, when the forehanded Hollanders have made
+away with the lion’s share of the foreign catch, outsiders have lost
+patience and classed them all as “Dutch toads”; but there have been
+no _boms_ but Scheveningen _boms_. Nowadays they have had to build
+them larger and they do not beach so easily, and it is probably only a
+matter of time when steam vessels will supplant them altogether; but
+when that evil hour strikes the chiefest picturesque glory of this
+little village will have forever departed.
+
+There used to be vast excitement, in the old days, over the first
+herring catch of the season, and it was always hurried ashore and
+conveyed to the king’s table with no end of flourish and punctilio.
+Over at Vlaardingen they used to post a watchman on the church tower,
+and when he made out the first boat coming in he would hoist a blue
+flag and all the people trooped joyfully down to the wharves shouting
+a song called “De Nieuwe Haring.” Scheveningen, indeed, still presents
+one of its most picturesque scenes when the returning fishermen arrive
+and their catch is auctioned off, down the beach near the lighthouse,
+with much more of gusto and excitement than you would imagine these
+phlegmatic people could muster. The shrewd Scheveningen fishermen have
+learned how to eke out the bare three hundred florins they realize from
+a year’s fishing by turning new tricks in the way of rope-spinning,
+sail-making, ship-building, and curing and smoking the herring. The
+fish go into this latter process as “steur haring” and emerge as
+“bokking”—if that means anything to anybody!
+
+The long-beaked curlew that flashes overhead with hoarse, raucous news
+of the sea looks down at this hour on pleasant and curious sights as he
+wings his swift circle above the Scheveningen neighborhood. The placid
+village of twisted alleys, of innumerable “Tabak te Koop” signs, of
+queer little gabled houses and unpainted fishermen’s huts, has emptied
+its good folk into its narrow main street which, fickle of name,
+starts out as Keizer-Straat, almost immediately becomes Willem-Straat,
+and within a moment is the Oud-Weg. Here one sees in actual life the
+fascinating things he has marveled over in the canvases of Teniers,
+Jan Steen, and Gerard Dou,—good Dutch _vrows_ supper-marketing. There
+they go, ballooning along, bargaining and bustling from shop to shop,
+storing capacious hampers with game and cheeses, and every grim line in
+their faces shouts a challenge to the shopmen to best them by so much
+as a _stuiver_ if they can. From time to time, quaint little children
+like sturdy Dutch toys escape from the press and clatter off home, with
+an air of vast responsibility, hugging in both arms a brown loaf of
+bread a yard long. How it recalls the bright pages of “Hans Brinker”;
+and as you catch a glimpse of the broad canal down the street it is
+natural enough to speculate upon the probability of Gretel’s winning
+another pair of silver skates before you get back to Scheveningen next
+summer.
+
+In the meadows back of the village women in blue shawls are drying
+and mending fishing-nets, nor do they so much as raise their heads
+as the yellow, double-decked tramway car rumbles past on its trip to
+The Hague. If all seats are occupied the car will display a large
+sign marked “Vol,” and rattle along oblivious to appeals from any and
+all who ask to get on. It is but three scant miles to the beautiful
+capital of Holland and the tramway makes it in ten minutes—a notable
+concession by leisurely Holland to the time-saving spirit of the age,
+in view of other days when they devoted a half-hour to making the same
+journey by canal barge. The broad, smooth highway that the yellow
+car follows is, as every one knows, one of the favorite roads of
+Europe. As the curlew looks down, between five and six o’clock of any
+bright summer afternoon, he is sure to find it thronged with handsome
+equipages and to see gay companies in each little wayside inn that
+peeps out from the deep shade of the noble trees. The desired touch
+of the foreign and unusual is supplied to the visitor in the scores
+of heavy carts drawn by frisking, barking dogs; in the ever-present
+windmills beating the air with long, awkward arms; and in dozens of
+storks that cock their wise heads over the edges of their nests and
+regard the passing show with philosophic amusement, patient as the old
+apple-women of Amsterdam.
+
+The Scheveningen _Bosch_ is one of the most delightful woods
+imaginable. It is national property, and no private park could be more
+beautifully kept up. A ball would roll with perfect smoothness down its
+driveways of crushed gravel, and even Ireland would be taxed to equal
+the vivid greenness of its lawns. This whole fair forest is studded
+with villas of the aristocracy and even of royalty. Their wide verandas
+and orchards and flowery lawns move the most contented to envy a
+Hollander the comfort he takes in his _zomerhuis_. To know the _Bosch_
+rightly it must be walked through; and the more leisurely and the
+oftener, the better. It is not only a lovely woodland set with charming
+homes, but everything a fine forest should be. The green and coppery
+beeches, the hardy oaks and elms, and the living embroidery of bright
+flowers perfume the air with delicate odors; and the wind in the lofty
+tops makes sweet and haunting music. Deep down in the clear mirror of
+the canals, splotches of broad leaf shadows lazily float and dapple
+like drowsy fishes. Through the deep foliage you catch occasional
+glimpses of open, sunny meadows, with cows contentedly grazing; and you
+come to revel in every vague and tranquil sensation.
+
+In the midst of this beautiful forest, two centuries and a half
+ago, the best-beloved and most widely read of Holland’s poets—the
+venerable Jacob Cats—composed his madrigals and moral fables, and so
+passed the last eight years of his eventful career. Rembrandt loved and
+painted him, and a monument stands to his memory in his native town of
+Brouwershaven. They say his books are in every peasants’ hut and his
+verses in every peasant’s heart. His cottage was at Zorgvliet, a few
+steps from Scheveningen, near where the Queen Mother now has her summer
+home, and there in the garden of the Café de la Promenade they will
+show you the old stone table at which he wrote, with the hole he cut in
+it for his inkstand.
+
+Wild game throng the wooded inner dunes. Partridges, hares, and rabbits
+abound in the underbrush, and the polder meadows yield the finest grade
+of mallard ducks. The pines and firs are resonant with the calls of
+cuckoos, pheasants, and nightingales. Farmers clear patches of ground
+to serve as finch flats, which they call _vinkie baans_; and there, in
+the autumn, they snare chaffinches which they sell for a cent apiece,
+to be used as a garnishment in serving other game.
+
+As you look out across the Scheveningen dunes and watch the day
+declining, stirring thoughts come trooping to mind of the gallant
+scenes these bleak shores have witnessed. Off yonder, two centuries
+and a half ago, fell the brave Tromp, hero of thirty-three sea fights.
+On the bridge of his lofty-sterned Brederode he died, as every true
+warrior longs to die, in the foremost thick of the fray. “I am done;
+but keep up a good heart,” were his last words as they carried him into
+his cabin. Next day they brought his body to these shores and bore it
+away to lie in the old gray church at Delft beside the revered William
+the Silent. “The bravest are the tenderest,” and his war-hardened
+sailors were not ashamed to weep as heartily for him as the little
+children, fifty years before, had wept in the streets for the great
+William. Half a dozen years later a shouting multitude thronged this
+beach and waved a _bon voyage_ to Charles II of England as he sailed
+homeward to his recovered throne, to restore a licentious court and
+renew such royal revels as had already cost England a revolution.
+Another dozen years roll around, and Scheveningen looks on while the
+fleets of France and England are battered to wreckage by the cannon
+of Holland’s pet hero, the intrepid De Ruyter. A century or so more,
+and once again this village is the storm centre of Holland’s hopes and
+fears as William Frederick I eludes the pursuing French troops and a
+little Scheveningen fishing-smack bears the whole royal family away
+in safety to Germany. And when he came back in triumph, twenty years
+later, it was at Scheveningen that he landed, and at the very spot
+where yonder gray obelisk now stands in commemoration.
+
+And now through chilly mists the sun, a vast bloated orange, settles
+down into the glowing wastes of the desolate North Sea. The roaring
+surf spreads glittering carpets far up the beach. It has suddenly
+become a region of placid power and glory, something quite other than
+the fabled home of monsters and terrors, of tempest and shipwreck.
+That vessel in the offing, with the black hull and the crimson sails,
+may be the very Flying Dutchman’s own; but still you would like to
+be on it and so much nearer the sinking sun. The sky is astounding;
+like a glorified Holland! There you see cloud-islands more wonderful
+than Walcheren; gray wastes that beggar the Zuyder Zee; sky dunes that
+stretch beyond Helder or the Hook; meadows more gorgeous than the tulip
+fields of Haarlem; celestial flora more pure and palpitating than any
+fairest, faintest bloom in any rarest, dimmest glade throughout the
+whole woodland of The Hague. It is Holland _in excelsis_.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+BERLIN
+
+6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.
+
+
+While the sun is still sinking behind the Potsdam hills that victorious
+old Fighting Fritz loved so well, and the hero himself, astride his
+bronze charger, in cloak and cocked hat in the statue group on the
+Linden, seems riding slowly home to his neighboring palace with the
+lengthening shadows, the vast industrial army of the German capital
+issues in myriad units from its individual barracks and debouches
+on the spacious squares and broad avenues in quest of the evening’s
+diversions. It is the lull hour. The long, hard day’s work over,
+the amusements of the night are shortly to begin. In this pleasant
+interval the bustling, aggressive city seems pervaded with a spirit
+of relaxation, and no more opportune moment presents for catching the
+Berliner off his guard and really seeing him as his intimates know him.
+
+This man, it should be borne in mind, is a type unto himself. The
+light-hearted Rhinelander, the solemn Bavarian, and the plodding,
+self-reliant Saxon are only half-brothers to the energetic, systematic,
+masterful Prussian whose most boisterous and irrepressible development
+is the Berliner. He plays as hard as he works, yielding to none in
+the thoroughness of either. He has a strong individuality, but with
+something of coarseness in feeling. He is enormously self-assertive,
+indefatigable, and patient, but scratch through his veneer of culture
+and you find a basis that is rude and often boorish. His optimism is
+sublime and his spirits correspondingly high. At work he is engrossed
+and determined, but when it is laid aside for the day he enters as
+eagerly upon his pastimes; and it is then one finds him witty and merry
+to a degree, but, at times, with the loudness and ostentation of a
+mischievous, unruly schoolboy. He is the sort of man that has a great
+time in zoölogical gardens, and goes picnicking in his best clothes.
+Intellectually, he is still as Buckle described him in the “History
+of Civilization in Europe,” the foremost man in the world when he is
+a scholar and the most ordinary in the main. Europeans dub him “a
+practical hedonist”; in America we should refer to him as “rough and
+ready.”
+
+As soon as supper is over these joyous and virile people display their
+primitive scorn of roofs and flock into the open for fun and frolic;
+yet supper, itself, has been one of Gargantuan proportions at which
+an observer, recalling Rabelais, might well have trembled for palmers
+in the cabbage. From the four quarters they gather in force to hang
+about the fountains in the roomy squares or loaf on the Linden benches
+until the call of the concert-hall or the comfortable, tree-shaded
+beer-garden allures to those bibulous indulgences that old Tacitus,
+eighteen centuries ago, noted as peculiarly their own. For silent
+now are the forges and furnaces of Spandau, the clothing _Fabriks_
+of the northeast suburbs, the factories of the east end, and all the
+skilled industries of the south. The artist colony of Moabit may no
+longer complain of drilling regiments, and the mammoth business blocks
+they call _Höfe_ have swelled the throng of clerks on Friedrich and
+Leipziger Strassen. All have supped; and merchant and laborer fare
+forth _en famille_ to take the evening air.
+
+With what heartiness and placidity does this multitude enjoy its ease!
+It is a trick your highstrung peoples beyond the borders can never
+get the hang of. It calms one merely to look on at the contentment
+and satisfaction with which they stroll slowly and merrily along,
+chattering animatedly in their deep guttural speech, and greeting
+friends with punctilious bows and infinite hat-raisings. With every
+other word they “bend their backs and they bow their heads,” like the
+celebrated character of “Dorothy.” There is an agreeable absence of
+rush and hurry. Ponderous and massive, but with an erectness bred of
+military training, they wear their sombre, loose-fitting clothes with
+palpable relish, for comfort and inconspicuousness are virtues of price
+with the Teuton. The stately _gnädige Frau_ treads heavily in rustling
+silk, the mincing _Fräulein_ favors ribbons and flounces, and _mein
+Sohn_ is dapper in a tight suit, lavender gloves, and the indispensable
+little cane. Chaperons, of course, abound; for if a young man were
+to walk abroad alone with an unmarried girl in Berlin he would be
+consigning her at once to a plane with the painted _nymphe de pavé_.
+
+The surroundings are animated. Motor-cars roll sedately along with the
+least din possible and with scrupulous regard for speed limits, and a
+prodigious assortment of cheap and comfortable _Droschke_ cabs hovers
+expectantly about with their drivers decked out in long coats and
+patent-leather hats. From time to time an officer in brilliant uniform
+or a diplomat in severe black, with a row of orders across his breast,
+posts past hurriedly to dine out in formal state; and with knowledge of
+the terrifying discomfort of a German social function comes confidence
+that most of them look from their smart broughams with profound envy at
+the jovial, care-free crowds that are so boisterously happy along the
+way.
+
+The visitor, who is struggling with an uncomfortable suspicion that he
+may be missing something in the other two rings of the circus, might do
+well to climb the Kreuzberg and take the whole show in like a map. He
+has probably already learned that although the city lies prostrate on a
+level sandy plain as guiltless of a hill as a billiard table, yet the
+indomitable Berliner has repaired this oversight of nature by himself
+building a fine little mountain at a convenient spot due south. That
+is one of the advantages in rearing your own hills—you can have them
+where you want them.
+
+In the sullen red of the dying day one beholds from the battlements of
+the Kreuzberg’s Gothic tower a monster plain, twenty-five miles in an
+irregular circle, smothered in house-tops, and barred and seamed with
+an intricate entanglement of carefully made streets. He sees parks and
+squares in surprising profusion, and an abundance of foliage in spite
+of the sand; and there is a sluggish river winding a serpentine course,
+a _Ringbahn_ encircling the suburbs, an elevated road that dives
+underground and becomes a subway, and surface lines without number. One
+could fancy a great cross in the centre of the city, whose upright is
+the long Friedrichstrasse and whose broad crosspiece is the splendid
+Unter den Linden. The last rays of the sun gild the roofs and spires
+of each of the “town districts,” which the Prussian Diet has recently
+merged into a Greater Berlin of four million souls—Wilmersdorf,
+whose “millionaire peasants” became rich overnight by selling their
+lands to speculators; Charlottenburg the Pampered, that has increased
+tenfold in thirty years; Rixdorf the Prosperous; and Schöneberg the
+Renowned—which is well worth a sentimental journey to the graves of
+the Brothers Grimm under the cypresses of St. Matthew’s Cemetery, if
+only out of gratitude for the familiar versions of “Cinderella,” “Tom
+Thumb,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and so many others of our childhood’s
+companions. The sunset glory falls where glory is due—on a region at
+our feet of ancient martial fame; the little village that the Knights
+Templar held for centuries, and the broad Tempelhofer Feld,—Prussian
+drill-ground for two hundred years,—whither all Berliners turn
+holiday-faces when the Kaiser reviews the Guards in spring and autumn,
+and journey cockishly homeward when the show is over, “snapping their
+fingers at the foeman’s taunts.”
+
+In every section that the Kreuzberg looks down upon, and still farther
+away under the fading western skies, pleasant signs of recreation
+abound. The Linden overflows, the lesser streets are swollen streams,
+and every open square is a ruffled lake of leisurely humanity. A
+strong tide of loiterers sets through the most popular of Berlin’s
+breathing-places—the stately Tiergarten—and ripples there about the
+bases of statues and monuments, the marble settles of the Sieges-Allée,
+and the sculptured benches of the _Anlagen_ of the Brandenburg Gate.
+There is the usual deep eddy before the graceful statue of the adored
+Queen Louise, which is half-buried in flowers by a grateful people
+every March 10. The bridle-paths teem with lines of aristocratic
+riders, with possibly the Kaiser himself among them. Indeed, no other
+part of the city may compare with the Tiergarten at this hour, so
+beautiful is it in turf and tree and so delightful in heavy fragrance.
+No wonder that Berliners have so long regarded it as the best last
+glimpse of life—to fight duels in by dawn in other days, and to take
+their own lives in now.
+
+[Illustration: BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN]
+
+All Berlin is now out of doors. The millionaires of the exclusive
+Tiergarten purlieus are cooling themselves in their villa gardens,
+and the middle-class man is beaming at the band at the Zoo, where the
+restaurant-terraces are overflowing into the flowered walks among the
+trees. There is a boisterous coterie of shouting children to every prim
+fountain in the prim squares. Out under the pines and cypresses of
+Grunewald crowds returning from the races are gazing admiringly at the
+pretty white villas that rim the verges of the placid forest lakes; and
+others are turning aside for the spectacular amusements of Luna Park.
+At Steglitz the bicycle races are ending and merrymakers are swarming
+into the Botanic Gardens to marvel over the cacti and palms of the long
+hot-houses. Capital boating is in progress on the Spree, and sailing at
+Wannsee, and steamer trips all through the suburbs. Bands are crashing
+in the noisy penny-shows of the tumultuous Zeltern; they are having
+beer in crowded _Weinhandlungen_, chocolate at dainty _Conditoreien_,
+and much besides in the jolly Vienna cafés that open out invitingly to
+the street. In every part of the city rise music and laughter and the
+sound of early revelry in pretty, tree-shaded summer gardens. It is an
+audible expression of the Berliners’ joy of living—their cherished
+_Lebensfreude_.
+
+Could we rise with Zeppelin we should find it the same now at
+Charlottenburg, and over at Potsdam. Charlottenburg the Prosperous is
+having its serene and dignified companies sauntering in quiet evening
+talk along the broad, handsome streets. The gay are at the lively
+_Orangerie_, the philosophic in the trim, pert little parks, and the
+sentimental among the flaming roses and fragrant trellises of the
+charming Palace Garden. In solemn and conscious superiority the great
+Technical High School and famed Reichanstalt shroud their learned
+cornices in the gloaming of tree-tops, and that chiefest mecca of
+all, the royal mausoleum, embowers its gleaming marble walls in heavy
+shrubbery at the bottom of its avenue of pines. No loiterer, you may be
+sure, but thinks reverently of the recumbent snowy effigies of the dead
+rulers that lie in the hushed gloom of that dim interior.
+
+Potsdam, Germany’s Versailles, steeped in the melancholy beauties of
+the Havelland pine forests, redolent of old Frederick the Great and his
+dream of an earthly Sans Souci, thinks nothing of drawing Berliners
+twenty miles to its twilight peace and calm. Exuberance tempers to the
+dignity and beauty of those parks and palaces where the Kaiser has his
+favorite royal seat. Up the broad Hauptweg they stroll by hundreds
+and gladden their patriotic eyes with the colonnades, porticoes, and
+statues of the vast New Palace that proved to the foes of defiant old
+Fritz that the sturdy warrior was far from bankrupt despite the Seven
+Years’ War. Nor do they forget that it was here the late emperor,
+beloved “Unser Fritz,” learned how
+
+                        “unto dying eyes
+    The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”
+
+The classic Town Palace of Potsdam is receiving its compliments,
+as usual, and no less the artistic Lustgarten, opulent in marbles
+and fountains; and many will be wandering even out to the cool and
+spacious park that lies about the charming Babelsberg Château. But old
+Frederick remains the local hero, and there is sure to be a crowd at
+the venerable lime-tree where petitioners used to stand to catch the
+eye of the king, and a kind of procession will be passing reverently
+before the garrison church, where lie his remains in the vault before
+which Napoleon outdid himself in eulogy the while he pilfered the old
+warrior’s sword. And the leaping column of the Great Fountain will
+be the centre of an admiring throng, and scores will be going up and
+down the vista of broad stairs and fruited terraces that lead to the
+long, low palace of Sans Souci. As to the latter, a stranger might be
+pardoned if he were to mistake it for a casino, which it strikingly
+resembles, with its flat-domed entrance, line of caryatids like
+pedestal busts, and the row of stone urns on the balustraded top of the
+façade. At this hour there is no admission, but one may peer through
+the low French windows and, in fancy, people Voltaire’s room with a
+miserly ghost of the crafty old philosopher, see him fraternizing and
+quarreling with the king, imagine a royal _soirée_ in progress with
+Frederick playing skillfully on the flute, recall the brilliant talk of
+the Round Table, and think with pity of the cheerless, childless old
+soldier toiling wearily on those histories that Macaulay praised, and
+winding his big clock, and yearning all the while to lie buried among
+his dogs out on the terrace. To many will come visions wrought from
+the extravagant fiction of Luise Mühlbach. What moral observations and
+theatrical posings fell to poor Frederick’s lot in her “Berlin and Sans
+Souci,” sandwiched in among the woeful loves of Amelia and Baron Trenck
+and of the dancer Barbarina and the High Chancellor’s son! But perhaps
+such literature helps one to understand the application to Frederick
+of the celebrated characterization of a very different personage, the
+“wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.”
+
+In Berlin proper there are two fine squares that best serve the
+well-advised as start-and-finish places for the most interesting
+evening walk to be had in the city—the Lustgarten before the Royal
+Palace and the Königs-Platz at the Tiergarten corner. By this notable
+route one arrives, within the smoking of two cigars, at something like
+an intelligent comprehension of Berlin and Berliners.
+
+The gracious expanse of the Lustgarten is so appealing in the
+melancholy light of sunset that one almost feels, at the very beginning
+of the stroll, like going no farther for fear of faring worse, but
+rather remaining where he is among the trees and fountains and artistic
+shrubbery and watching the children playing _Hashekater_ around the
+colossal Granite Basin, or _Ringer-Ringer-Rosa_ at the marble stairs of
+Frederick William’s lofty statue. Soft splashes of deep colors warm
+the long rows of blinking windows in the Royal Palace on the left, and
+flush the domes of the cathedral and the columns of the Old Museum’s
+Ionic portico. Hundreds of Berliners are idling along the asphalt walks
+that entice to the Palace Bridge that arches the Spree in a double line
+of marble groups and so opens up the long, tree-shaded perspective
+of the Linden. To see it at this hour one would not guess that this
+fair Lustgarten had once been a neglected palace-close and even a
+dusty drill-ground; no more than one could believe that the occasional
+decrepit church or twisting, narrow street in the district in the rear
+is all that marks antiquity in the whole of the city. For the furious
+_tempo_ of Berlin’s development has swept everything before it. Three
+out of every four buildings, all over town, are garishly modern.
+Indeed, it is all so utterly of the present moment that it is hard to
+believe that even a group of fishermen’s huts could have stood here
+beside the Spree so long as seven hundred years ago. Were one to see no
+more of Germany than its capital he might very easily imagine a Chicago
+or two somewhere in the empire, but certainly not a Nuremberg.
+
+Sunset imparts an air of cordiality to the ponderous, baroque,
+seven-hundred-roomed Royal Palace, whose four stories of regular window
+lines suggest an ornate and elaborate factory that had been diverted
+from its original purpose by the addition of the chapel dome on the
+west wing. However, for those who cross its low terrace and enter the
+sculptured portals there awaits a revelation of pomp and majesty, of
+throne-room splendors and saloon magnificence, that rivals the best
+of Versailles and Vienna. Unhappily we cannot here see the windows of
+the royal family’s apartments, for they are on the second floor of the
+opposite wing; whence the Kaiser looks out on the Neptune fountain of
+the Schloss-Platz and the elaborate façade of the royal stables when
+the purple banner that denotes his presence flies from the palace
+standard.
+
+In the gloaming the high portico columns, “Lion Killer,” “Amazon,” and
+shadowy sculptured groups of the vestibule of the classic Old Museum
+gleam through the dark branches of the trees with charming grace and
+effectiveness. Not all the imposing galleries on Museum Island, just
+beyond, can displace this well-beloved old temple of the arts in the
+affectionate regard of Berliners. The commanding Dom, or cathedral,
+dominates the Lustgarten and all the city besides, but in the modest
+and inoffensive manner that is becoming in an architectural _débutante_
+of only six seasons—though that is quite long enough for a building to
+become _passé_ in Berlin. Its granite walls, copper domes, high-vaulted
+portals, elaborately carved cornices, and profusion of statuary stand
+out in beautiful relief against the darkness of the trees beyond.
+
+At this hour the sturdy, besculptured Palace Bridge is thronged with
+loiterers leaning over the broad balustrades to admire the festoons
+of lichen on the opposite masonry embankment or gaze down into the
+languid blue Spree. These waters have journeyed wearily all the way
+from distant Saxony, and with little enough to delight them along the
+road, excepting, perhaps, the scenes of the romantic and picturesque
+forest—Venice of Spreewald, where the strange Wendish people in
+outlandish garb pole flat market-barges through the labyrinth of canals
+and jabber to each other in a foreign tongue. Even on reaching the
+capital, the career of the Spree continues uneventful and dejected;
+and shortly after clearing the city it gives up in discouragement
+and empties itself into the Havel at Spandau. One finds a pleasant
+evening-life along its masonry banks, however, in spite of the personal
+indifference of the stream itself, and sometimes even of a brisk and
+important nature, thanks to the shipping from the canals. Beside these
+urban embankments one sees, here and there, a narrow sidewalk between
+the wall and the houses that instantly recalls the delightful little
+_rivas_ along the Venice canals. It is interesting to watch the swift,
+pert little steamers that dash up and down the stream and to take note
+of the air of bravado with which they plunge under the low bridges.
+Then, there are the soldiers washing their linen service uniforms on
+floating docks. But best of all are the canal boats. These invariably
+have a fat woman at the tiller and an excited dog dancing from end to
+end, while a sturdy husband propels a snail-like passage by means of a
+long pole which he sets to his shoulder like a crutch and inserts the
+other end into niches in the walls and so plods the entire length of
+the deck, with the boat advancing slowly under his feet.
+
+Entering Unter den Linden from the Schloss-Brücke, the imposing array
+of splendid public buildings on either hand of the expanding vista
+suggests the middle of the street as the only adequate viewpoint—and
+the majority take it, in the evening. The visitor is bound speedily
+to conclude that, unless it be Vienna, no European city can boast a
+more beautiful or impressive double line of structures. They have
+dignity and solidity in appearance, richness and taste in decoration,
+and spaces to stand in of princely proportions. The agreeable effect
+of shade trees has been freely made use of, and on all sides one sees
+that profusion of sculpture and statuary in which Berlin is as rich as
+London, for example, is poor. As if impressed with such surroundings,
+the evening crowds move along slowly and observantly, looking up
+admiringly at the dark gray fronts—the statue-set façade of the
+Arsenal, the stately palaces of Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the
+Opera House, the rococo Royal Library, and the palace of old Emperor
+William I, from whose famous corner window the conqueror of Sedan
+used to look out affectionately on the street life of his people.
+With no less of satisfaction must the old emperor have looked over
+the heads of the crowds at the University across the way—the proper
+toast of all Germany. One notes its open square and wide triple story
+and thinks of the ripe scholarship suggested by the surrounding
+statues of its savants, Helmholtz, Mommsen, Treitschke, and the great
+William and Alexander von Humboldt, whose ashes lie out at Tegel
+under Thorwaldsen’s beautiful “Hope.” Here six hundred teachers and
+ten thousand students work in the inspiring memory of such masters
+as these, and of such others as Fichte and Hegel and Schelling. From
+contemplations over the intellectual achievements of Prussia one turns
+to martial glory in the form of Rauch’s immortal equestrian statue
+of Frederick the Great, about which the crowds are now swarming, and
+observes the hero’s head cocked in characteristic defiance and his hand
+lightly resting on the hilt of his ready sword. Berliners make great
+ado in studying and identifying the numerous eminent men of that period
+whose reliefs are exquisitely executed on the four sides of the lofty
+pedestal.
+
+And now we pass under the limes and chestnuts of the five-streeted
+Linden, keeping to the broad gravel promenade in the centre where the
+children play all day and their parents fill the benches half the
+night. On its outer streets one may see the finest hotels, theatres,
+cafés, and shops of the city. It is amusing to watch the people at this
+hour, in settling their arrangements for the evening, cluster about
+the poster pillars that they call “Litfassäulen,” and the newspaper
+kiosks, scanning announcements and theatre bills. Familiar to them, but
+suggestive to a stranger, are the iron standards at important street
+intersections supporting placards of the red cross of the hospital
+boards to indicate the locations of emergency surgeons, who are always
+on the spot. You may rest on a Linden bench a moment, if you like,
+but expect thrifty Berlin to tax you for it; and read carefully the
+conspicuous placards, so redolent of this systematic city, to learn
+just where you may sit; for some are “reserved for women,” some for
+“nurses with children,” others for “adults,” and what remain for mere
+“men.”
+
+But the well-advised will break the walk when they reach the corner of
+Friedrichstrasse for a few minutes of refreshments at the celebrated
+Café Bauer, where open house is held for all the world, and where
+you may take your ease under the frescoes of Anton Werner, or, at a
+balcony table, look down on the cosmopolitan congestion of the streets
+and observe ladies having ices across the way at Kranzler’s after the
+fatigue of shopping at Tietz’s or Wertheim’s.
+
+The animated scenes of the Café Bauer are those of busy restaurants
+the world over, with the possible difference that Berliners make more
+of café life than many others, as being an institution essential
+to temperaments that crave social diversion, simple enjoyment and
+friendliness. So we hear much laughter and find the air vital with
+the vociferous rumbling thunder of this deep-lunged speech, and
+with continual explosions of “So!” and “Ach!” and “Ja wohl!” and
+“Bitte!” and “Entschuldigen!” and “Wunderschön!” and, especially,
+“Prosit!” There is an incessant clamoring for waiters by handclaps
+and shouts of “Kellner!” to which those distracted functionaries
+respond with “Augenblick!”—“in a wink of the eye,”—and dash off
+in haste, to return at leisure. The gold that falls in _Trinkgeld_
+passes belief; but tipping is like breathing all over Berlin. It is
+said that the head waiters pay handsomely for the positions. You will
+see few people in the Café Bauer uncompanioned, for sociability is a
+national characteristic. The man in the corner reading the “Fliegende
+Blätter” or “Illustrirte Zeitung” or any other of the eleven thousand
+publications of the city will shortly be joined by some friend for whom
+he is waiting and raise his voice in the general “Prosit!” chorus.
+Should you address the waiter in English, you will be answered at once
+in that language; as you would, for that matter, in any Berlin business
+house. The formality on every hand, the bowing and eternal thanking,
+is of the Berliner Berlinesque. It is a trick that is soon picked up,
+and it is no time at all before you can enter a store with the best of
+them, remove your hat and wish the clerk “Mahlzeit,” remain uncovered
+until your purchase is made, again bow and say “Mahlzeit,” replace your
+hat, and go about your business.
+
+From a balcony table at the Bauer you may study, as you elect, the
+diners within or the crowds without. If it be the latter, you doubtless
+observe at once the extensive presence of the military element that
+so preëminently dominates the empire. There goes a stiff-backed,
+narrow-waisted, tight-coated officer jangling his sword and fussing
+at his gloves. His chin is tilted at a supercilious angle and his
+mustachios are trained to look fierce, like the Kaiser’s. As he
+approaches a brother officer he begins a salute a quarter-block away
+and keeps it up as far again after passing. He would perish before he
+would unbend in public to give the most unofficial of winks at the
+pretty, barearmed nursemaid who is tripping demurely by, and yet it is
+whispered that in private “Die Wacht am Rhein” is not the only song
+he knows. And lo, the humble man of the ranks,—facetiously dubbed
+“Sandhase,”—who is saluting and “goose-stepping” to some superior or
+other the greater part of the time. You perceive him now to be roaming
+about with evident relish; and a familiar bit of local color is the
+dark blue tunic and gray trousers and the brass-bedecked leather helmet
+with its _Pickelhaube_ top spike. You learn to distinguish the corps,
+in time, by the color of the shoulder knots.
+
+Parenthetically, it will be remembered that these husky fellows are
+paid just nine cents a day, and out of that go two and a half cents for
+dinner. Their only free rations are coffee and the famous black bread.
+They carry their “cash balance” suspended about the neck in a bag, and
+any time an officer wishes to make sure the “sand-rabbit” has not been
+squandering his money too fast, he opens the bag at morning inspection
+and examines the contents. Pay is small, all the way up; a second
+lieutenant, with heavy and unavoidable social obligations, receives
+twenty dollars a month—like an American sergeant. Higher officers must
+live in town and keep their horses. “Marry money” becomes the first
+requirement of the “silent manual.” But Germany’s exposed borders must
+be lined with bayonets, and she has not forgotten that the French war
+cost her a hundred thousand men in killed and wounded; so she maintains
+an army of a peace-footing strength of six hundred thousand, at a cost
+of $175,000,000 a year. The “Defenders of the Fatherland” become, in
+consequence, the pets of the court and the social arbiters of the
+empire.
+
+On leaving the Bauer it is amusing to dip for a few moments into the
+tumult of rip-roaring Friedrichstrasse and sweep along with merchants,
+government clerks, shop girls, artists, soldiers, and all the rest of
+the jovial, motley company. Out in the middle of the street students
+go rushing by, boisterously inviting trouble and waving their hats and
+the husky bludgeons they call canes. Conveyances of all descriptions
+are coming and going—_Droschken_, stages, double-decked omnibuses,
+motor-cars, _et al._ The corner of Leipzigerstrasse is a whirlpool
+through which traffic moves like so much drifting pack-ice. Trolley
+cars pass gingerly by to come to a stop at the iron posts marked
+“Haltestellen.” One notes that the little “isles of safety” in the
+middle of the street have each its representative of the omnipresent
+police, dressed up like major-generals in military long coats and
+nickel-pointed helmets. They could tell you that Leipzigerstrasse is
+just as crowded all the way to the tumultuous Potsdam Gate, where
+on each sharp corner of the five radiating streets ponderous hotels
+project into the maelstrom like pieces of toast on spits. I say the
+policemen _could_ tell you that, if they wanted to, but the probability
+is they would only wave excited hands and shout “Verboten!”
+
+And that makes you realize that about everything you want to do in
+Berlin is forbidden for some reason or other. No yarn of the Mormons
+ever conveyed an idea of such perpetual, unwinking vigilance as is
+second nature to this police force. Soon after arriving you become
+uncomfortably conscious of being secretly and unremittingly watched,
+but while this rankles for a while you eventually become acclimated,
+as it were, and pass into a hardened stage of moral irresponsibility
+where you are scrupulously circumspect and not a little sly. Since the
+police have elected to play the rôle of your conscience you determine
+to go about without one, like Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, in the
+balmy confidence that whatever you are up to must be all right or the
+authorities would have notified you that it was “verboten” and had you
+up at headquarters for one of those myriad fines that range from two
+cents up.
+
+Parenthetically, again, it is the people’s fault. They are
+government-mad; intoxicated with bureaucracy. Not for all the gold
+reserve at Spandau would they abate one jot of this supervision. There
+is a law for everything. Some one has said that for every pfennig the
+German pays in taxes he expects and receives a pfennig’s worth of
+government. You see it on every hand. Each bus and car is placarded to
+announce its exact seating capacity, as well as the precise amount of
+standing-room on the platforms; once that space is occupied it would
+not stop for you, though you go on your knees. Have you ever taken
+notice of the little metallic racks at each end of a Berlin street
+car? That is where you leave the cigar you may be smoking when you
+enter; putting it anywhere else is absolutely “verboten.” It is the
+spirit of the time. Berlin is a “touch-the-button” town—a machine-made
+community of deadly rote and rule. System is the thing. Street numbers
+have arrows indicating which way they run; letter boxes are cleared
+every fifteen minutes; a letter goes by the pneumatic _Rohrpost_ with
+the speed of a telegram; packages are sent by the parcel delivery
+more quickly and more cheaply than by express; hotels have electric
+elevators and vacuum cleaning. It is so all over Germany. Who ever sees
+a picture of Düsseldorf, these days, without a Zeppelin airship in the
+background? How eloquent it is of the thoroughness of this people whose
+boastful “Made in Germany” is expressive of the rankest materialism,
+that their warlike capital should be distinguished for the quality and
+quantity of its artistic feeling, and excel, besides, in usefulness,
+as exemplified in scores of museums that are admittedly the most
+instructive of any in the world.
+
+As the last of daylight disappears, Friedrichstrasse’s shops blaze out
+brilliantly in every guise of electricity, the present pet scientific
+rage. The window dressings are highly attractive, but seldom the
+interiors behind them. Americans are finding home products in the kodak
+and sewing-machine stores, in penny-in-the-slot establishments, and
+at alleged American soda-fountains and bars—all displayed for sale
+in business buildings that are better built than the battlements of
+Jericho. People need not go out of a single block on Friedrichstrasse
+to secure every comfort they require, for in so small a space one finds
+fashionable hotels, _hôtels garnis_, _pensions_, or the exemplary
+_hospices_ affected by ladies traveling alone; where also you may
+dine at establishments to suit your purse—at extravagant cost, or on
+the lightest of repasts at a _Conditorei_, or on a heavy seven-course
+dinner at a popular restaurant for twenty cents, with a glass of
+beer in the bargain. One finds the dance halls largely supported by
+foreigners and tourists, of which latter America sends fully forty
+thousand annually. It is also speedily apparent that the undertow of
+the feverish stream brings its wreckage to the surface, where the
+rouged cheek and carmined lip betray the presence of fiercer kinds of
+“questing bestes” than ever were recorded in the “Morte d’Arthur.”
+
+Out again under the rustling trees of the Linden one strolls on in
+increasing delight. In the growing zest of the evening the prosperous
+crowds toss pfennigs to the begging old “Linden Angels” and patronize
+the flower-venders and newsboys. Of the Linden’s fivefold boulevard,
+the outer streets are rumbling with heavy wagons and cabs, the drive
+with carriages, the bridle-path is lively with belated riders and the
+broad middle promenade is overflowing with pedestrians. Good Americans,
+on passing the United States Embassy headquarters, at the corner of
+Schadowstrasse, raise their hats in a sudden welling of patriotic
+reverence, and very likely with a wistful sympathy for the _heimweh_
+that must frequently oppress the two thousand members of the American
+colony that tarry in the pleasant environs of Victoria Louise Platz.
+Diplomats are coming and going on aristocratic Wilhelmstrasse, which
+sweeps southward at this point, and where the lights are beginning to
+sparkle before the double line of government department buildings,
+royal palaces, and foreign embassy houses. The famous palace of mellow
+gray stone, in which the Iron Chancellor lived and held court like a
+king in the heyday of his power, shrouds itself proudly in the deep
+green of its garden of thick shrubbery.
+
+But all this fails to hold the stroller’s attention when he glances
+about and sees he is at the end of the Linden and that a dozen steps
+will carry him to a sudden widening into stately Pariser-Platz, at the
+bottom of which, flanked by fountained lateral lawns and light-flecked
+in the twilight blur, rises one of Berlin’s chiefest features—the
+famed Brandenburg Gate. When the Berlin exile is homesick this is
+the picture he always sees—the imposing five-arched gateway, creamy
+against the misty deep green of the Tiergarten tree-tops, the dignified
+fronts of surrounding embassy houses, flowered grass plots on either
+hand, leaping fountains, the long lines of the trees of the Linden, and
+through the gateway-portals glimpses of colonnades and white statues in
+the cool, dusky _allées_ of the park.
+
+It is an inspiring spot. The classic grace of Greece is present in the
+gate itself,—a copy of the Athenian Propylæa,—and the eventualities
+of warfare are suggested in Schadow’s bronze Quadriga above it, which
+the envious Napoleon carried off to his Paris. These old trees of the
+Linden know much of the turning of the wheel of fortune; they shook
+to the tread of the conquering legions of Napoleon the Great, after
+Jena, when Queen Louise and her little ten-year-old son fled in want
+and humiliation; but they also rocked, threescore and five years later,
+to the shouting of the armies of a united and triumphant Germany when
+that same little boy, become Emperor William I, returned from the
+annihilation of Napoleon the Little.
+
+Any German student, adequately inspired, will tell the legend of the
+Quadriga; how the Goddess of Victory each New Year’s Eve drives her
+chariot and four up the Linden, pays her respects to Frederick the
+Great on his bronze horse and is back in her place by 1 A.M. And that
+is the night, by the way, that the Great Elector rides his charger all
+over the city, taking note of the year’s changes, and returns to his
+position on the Kurfürsten Brücke before the stroke of one. Out of
+the same Nibelungen Land comes the legend of the White Lady that goes
+moaning through the Royal Palace when a Hohenzollern is about to die.
+Now we are on Berlin traditions, it may be said that there is more
+agreeable flesh and blood to the custom of receiving bouquets from the
+witches of the Blocksberg on Walpurgis Nacht (May 1), and an altogether
+human foundation for the ancient torch dances at Hohenzollern weddings,
+of which Carlyle has given so enthusiastic a description.
+
+Beyond the gate, we face a beautiful picture. The sweeping arc of
+the _Anlagen_, rimmed with marble benches, balustrades, and statues,
+is spirited with pleasure seekers, and its thick lines of lights are
+all glowing brightly, and carriages and cabs are speeding noiselessly
+across it. An attractive dilemma presents, as to whether we choose to
+reach the adjoining Königs-Platz by the embowered and vernal Path
+of Peace—the tree-arched Friedens-Allée through this corner of the
+Tiergarten—or by the celebrated War-Way—the Sieges-Allée—between the
+double lines of the thirty-two marble groups portraying the rulers of
+the House of Brandenburg. There are advantages to either; the first is
+shorter and supremely sylvan, but the second presents an opportunity
+of settling for one’s self the violent difference of opinion as to the
+artistic merits of this elaborate gift of the Kaiser to his capital.
+Each of the groups of the latter has a heroic statue of a Prussian
+ruler half encircled by a marble bench whose ends are Hermes busts
+of eminent men of that period. We are entitled to an opinion. Some
+pronounce it incomparable; others think it pompous and insipid, and
+very much like a stone cutter’s yard.
+
+In either event one soon reaches the Königs-Platz, and beholds
+envisioned the power and glory of the Fatherland. At no hour does it
+appear to such advantage as at twilight. The dusky shadows lie heavy
+about the great circular field of trees and shrubbery, shrouding the
+sculptured mass of the vast Reichstag building until its huge glass
+dome looms like a colossal moon in a lake of emerald. Bismarck and Von
+Moltke rise above their statue-groups like demigods of bronze, and
+the lofty Column of Victory, studded with captured cannon, rears its
+brisk and lightly-poised angel to acclaim the glories of Germany to
+an invisible world among the skies. Kroll’s neighboring summer garden
+is gay in hundreds of colored lights that glow in the grass plots
+and dim arbors and hang like pendent fruit from the branches of the
+trees. The dusk deepens into gloom, and twilight plays Whistler-tricks
+with fountain spray and statue. Distant domes pass, in night wizardry,
+for ghostly war-tents of Von Moltke. Faint vapors steal among the
+trees of the lower levels, and the dark of dim retreats is deeper
+for the brilliance of groups of lights that fade surrounding foliage
+into shades of pale olive. Music drifts softly over from Kroll’s,
+and the subdued hum of engulfing Berlin conveys a pleasant sense of
+companionship and a feeling of admiration and affection.
+
+In the vivid appreciation of all we have just been seeing, one thinks
+in amazement, _What a people!_ Harveyized against everything but
+progress, they are bending their tremendous energy to the enormous
+task of transforming Berlin from the capital of a kingdom into the
+capital of an empire. To see what they are accomplishing is to whip
+one’s wastrel forces and holystone his resolution. Here is energy and
+power of a kind to move mountains. Foreign critics bite their nails in
+envy and decry Berlin as “a parvenu among capitals”; they say it lacks
+distinction, is solemnly conscious of its new dignity, is “big without
+being cosmopolitan, and imposing without being impressive.” That it
+is garishly modern is true enough, as in the light of its sudden
+apotheosis it could not have otherwise been, and its own people are
+first to admit frequent grave errors in artistic taste. But taken all
+in all, a fairer, more substantial or more worthy city has never before
+been reared in the same length of time in the history of mankind. Nor
+is the end yet. The soaring impetus of the capital waxes with its own
+effort; gathers strength with each fresh achievement. Germany may be
+pardoned for taking pride in having risen as a world power to the very
+van of the nations, with her war-lord one of the foremost figures of
+the era. That his capital is his special pride is well known, and there
+are many who feel that he has gone far to realizing his expressed
+determination to make Berlin the most beautiful city of Europe.
+
+One rests in the Königs-Platz, at the foot of Bismarck’s statue, and
+regards with wonder the stern features of that man of “blood and iron,”
+to whose prescience and indomitable resolution these vast results
+are so largely due. The best of Bismarck is not dead, but lives and
+increases in the activities of his countrymen. As was said of another,
+“Would you see his monument, look about you.” The destiny Germany is
+working out is the one he bequeathed her; all this fair fruition is
+the flower of his seeding. The Kaiser may continue his idolatry of his
+grandfather by sowing the empire with statues of the war emperor, but
+the people do not for a moment forget that the man who previsioned and
+compelled these results was he at the feet of whose grim statue we
+uncover in deep respect in the evening calm of the Königs-Platz. The
+hand was the hand of Bismarck.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+LONDON
+
+7 P.M. TO 8 P.M.
+
+
+It will probably have seemed to many that in London the evening hour
+between seven and eight o’clock is the most distinctive and significant
+of the twenty-four, the one that is most expressive of the city’s real
+life and character. It has something in its mellowness and repose
+that stimulates in the spectator a subtle receptiveness and quickens
+a special sensitiveness to the trooping impressions of this manifold,
+multi-faceted community. One comes nearest then to truly “sensing”
+colossal, world-weary, indomitable London, as she relaxes a gracious
+hour to catch breath in the turmoil and struggle that has endured for
+more than a dozen centuries. For quite the same reason as you would not
+say that the ocean is most characteristic in either calm or storm, but
+rather when rolling in long and steady swells, so London is not so much
+her real self at her most vacant hour of sunrise when the milk carts
+clatter where the omnibuses usually are and the street lights turn as
+wan and sickly as the tramps on the benches, nor yet at the height of
+her turbulence when busy men are dashing hatless about Cheapside and
+loaded drays are delayed for hours in traffic blocks, but rather in
+the agreeable period of early evening “let-up” while truce is effective
+between the working-hours of day and the playing-hours of night.
+
+Of course, “let-up” is meant in a comparative sense only, for in
+the bright lexicon of London there is properly no such word; but
+there comes at seven o’clock at least as much of a lull as is ever
+to be looked for here. The savage roar of the streets is dulled to a
+deep growl, the crowds become shuffling and idle and their relative
+depletion and the proportionate activity and congestion in restaurants,
+_pensions_, and hotel dining-rooms are eloquent of the fact that the
+great city is now engaged in solemn rites before the Roast Beef of
+Old England. Nor does the altered complexion of things come amiss to
+the distracted foreign visitors who, though at odds in everything
+else, are of one opinion in this, that, without reservation on the
+part of humor, during the greater part of the day they cannot see
+London for the people. By that they mean that the life of the streets
+is so intense and so varied that it proves a serious distraction
+from taking adequate note of the appearance and significance of the
+city itself. It is, therefore, with profound satisfaction that they
+welcome an hour in which they may devote a portion of their energy to
+something more edifying than jostling pedestrians or escaping sudden
+and sordid destruction by motor-car, hansom, or bus. It is now that
+the town throws off the yoke of its drivers and the very buildings
+become instinct with individuality and character. Every little dim and
+noiseless square, each broad and lordly park, the massive mansions of
+the great whose names have been in history for ages, business blocks
+of Old-World charm to which trade seems the merest incident, blackened
+pavements and Wren’s slender steeples, every memory-haunted nook and
+corner, all wrought by smoke and fog to a blood-brotherhood of neutral
+tones, are joining the song Father Thames is singing of dignity, power,
+and grandeur,—all breathe the common exultation of being London. It is
+more than Self-Assertion. It is Apotheosis!
+
+If this may seem an extravagant idea to some, it is certain there can
+be but one mind as to the relief that comes with the “let-up.” It
+gives a man a chance to find himself after being lost and daunted and
+disheartened all day, and to square off and give the giant a good look
+between the eyes and happily attain to some just impression. “Some just
+impression” is doubtless within the possibilities, but any complete
+one is not. London is so vast in territory, interests, activities, and
+history—such a “monstrous tuberosity of civilized life,” as Carlyle
+observed—that it effectually defies comprehension. It cannot be taken
+in. Look south on it from Hornsey or Primrose Hill, or west on it from
+Blackwell or the Greenwich Observatory, or east from the top of the
+opera house at Hammersmith, or north from Crystal Palace, and you may
+see a vast prairie of house-tops and sharp, aspiring steeples and
+irregular, twisting streets, but you also observe quite the same kind
+of prairies rolling away under the horizon beyond your ken. If one were
+to try such an experiment right at the heart of things, futility would
+still be obvious, for either the Victoria Tower of Parliament or the
+slightly higher dome of St. Paul’s lifts you only four hundred feet
+above the pavement to hang like a lookout in midocean. There might be
+hope of a completer impression if you tried an aëroplane; in which case
+prostrate London-town would take the seeming of some fabulous “questing
+beste” of the “Morte d’Arthur,” in format the traditional lion, rotund,
+monstrous, and oddly marked, half-reclining and gazing fixedly seaward
+down the Thames. A monster, indeed, fourteen miles by ten, and of a
+vitality so expansive that his nebulous aura pervades an area of seven
+hundred square miles! Along his grim, grimy side the Thames draws a
+crawling blue band with a deep _U_ for the convenience of his paws as
+it swings around the Isle of Dogs, the Regent’s Canal marks him lightly
+up the shoulder and clear across the upper body, and along the profile
+of the head meanders the marshy River Lea. Odd green patches would
+stand for the parks—Regent’s on his back, Hyde, Green, and St. James’s
+on his flank, and on his right ear, Victoria. At the present hour he
+is speckled with a myriad of lights from the tip of his tail to his
+chin-whisker, and doubtless in all respects looks wild enough to daunt
+Sir Launcelot himself.
+
+To the average visitor London is the Strand, Fleet Street, Regent
+Street, the Embankment, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, the
+British Museum, and the Tower. But tastes differ in this as in other
+things, and Boswell was doubtless justified in amusing himself by
+noting how different London was to different people. Opinions on the
+subject have always been very decided but hopelessly conflicting.
+“Sir,” quoth Dr. Johnson to Boswell at the Mitre Tavern, “the happiness
+of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.”
+Note Heinrich Heine, on the other hand, observing in his “English
+Fragments”: “Do not send a philosopher to London, and, for Heaven’s
+sake, do not send a poet. The grim seriousness of all things; the
+colossal monotony; the engine-like activity; the moroseness even of
+pleasure; and the whole of this exaggerated London will break his
+heart.” There is wisdom, as always, in a happy mean; and one might do
+worse than to go about his sight-seeing with the whetted curiosity and
+flaming imagination of those country children once described by Leigh
+Hunt as fancying they see “the Duke of Wellington standing with his
+sword drawn in Apsley House, and the Queen, sitting with her crown on,
+eating barley-sugar in Buckingham Palace.”
+
+To such a mood as this, evening impressions are fresh and vivid, and
+the goggle-eyed stranger, suddenly set down at seven o’clock before the
+Shaftesbury Fountain in the centre of Piccadilly Circus,—“feeling in
+heart and soul the shock of the huge town’s first presence,”—would
+probably have his own opinion of any intimation that there was really
+very little doing at that time in view of the hour and the absence
+of Londoners in the country. He would rather incline to the view of
+the Chinese prince who took one look at the wave of humanity sweeping
+across London Bridge and went back to his hotel and wrote home that
+he had reached the spot where all human life originates. Certainly
+the stranger at Piccadilly Circus would need but one wild glance at
+the glare and blaze of lights, the excitement around the “Cri,” the
+beckoning bill-boards of the Pavilion, the dazzle of shop windows in
+the sweeping curve of the Regent Street quadrant and the tremendous
+interweaving of carriages, swift hansoms, delivery bicycles, lumbering
+busses, “taxis,” “flys,” and “growlers,” to start him shouting to the
+nearest “Bobby” through the roar of the wild surge for safe passage to
+the sidewalk—which would be readily and obligingly accomplished by
+that calmest and most tranquil of officials, the mere lift of whose
+hand is as miraculously effective as the presence of a regiment at
+“charge.”
+
+And yet the intimation to the stranger would be entirely within
+the facts, for a good proportion of Londoners are too far away to
+hear the seven o’clock bells ring in town. The Briton’s passion
+for out of doors leads him far afield. Thousands are at this hour
+in the surf at Brighton or strolling on the terraced streets of
+the chalk cliffs there; hundreds are at Harrow enjoying the wide
+prospect beloved by the boy Byron; others in the pleasant villages of
+Hatfield and St. Albans; some are spying for deer in Epping Forest;
+and a happy multitude is turning from the “Maze” and Dutch Gardens
+of Hampton Court to roll homeward by brake and motor-car along the
+incomparable chestnut avenue of Bushy Park, among the placid deer of
+Richmond, and the manifold delights of Kew Gardens. For hours the
+“tubes,” surface cars, and busses have been working to capacity to
+get business men home, and loaded trains have been groaning out of
+Charing Cross, Euston, Paddington, St. Pancras, Victoria, and Waterloo.
+They have all arrived by now at their various destinations—around
+the picturesque Common of Clapham, the breezy heights of Highgate,
+the river greens of Hammersmith, the lush meadows of Dulwich, the
+stuccoed villas of Islington, the quietude of Bethnal Green, or the
+wooded gardens of Brixton Road. Fancy residential property, in every
+guise of architectural surprises, is drowsing in the shade of elm
+and oak and poplar and humming to the contented chatter of reunited
+families. The fortunate stranger whom Sir Launcelot has “asked down”
+to “Joyous Garde” is reveling in the generous roast that makes its
+august appearance between courses of Scotch salmon and Surrey fowl,
+and presently there will be politics and Havanas after the ladies have
+left, and later on a general assembling in a serene walled garden
+with light laughter and low-voiced talk and mild discussion of
+water-parties, dinners, and dances.
+
+The London parks are in full revelry now, with bands at play and
+tens of thousands of loiterers crowding the benches and moving along
+broad, graveled walks under the deep shadows of old elms and in the
+fragrance of trim flowerbeds. At Hampstead Heath, for example, not so
+much as the ghost of a highwayman haunts the bracken-carpeted hills,
+and East-Enders are out there in force along “Judge’s Walk,” and in
+the “Vale of Health” that Keats and Leigh Hunt admired, or up at the
+“Flagstaff” inspecting “Jack Straw’s Castle,” as Dickens so often did,
+or speculating upon the sources of the ponds with as much aplomb as
+ever did Mr. Pickwick himself.
+
+Down on rugged and untamed Blackheath the band is playing at “The
+Point,” and in all that region where Wat Tyler and Jack Cade stirred
+Kent to rebellion the talk is now of London docks and the latest scores
+of the golfers.
+
+Up at airy Victoria Park the swans in the ponds and the chaffinches in
+the hawthorn bushes are performing to enthusiastic audiences, and the
+Gothic Temple of the Victoria Fountain is rimmed with rough gallants
+and the “Sallies of their Alleys” who betray no inclination to “attempt
+from Love’s sickness to fly.”
+
+The cyclists are foregathered at picturesque Battersea Park and
+chatting with their sweethearts over tea in the refreshment rooms,
+while hundreds of unemployed who can afford neither bicycle,
+sweetheart, nor tea gaze gloomily on the gorgeous blooms of the
+sub-tropical garden, loll over the balustrade of the long Thames
+embankment, and end up by sprawling face down on the grass or dozing
+fitfully on the benches.
+
+Perhaps the largest outpouring of all is at ever popular Regent’s Park,
+preferred by the substantial middle-class,—long noted, like George
+I, for virtues rather than accomplishments. Doubtless they are now
+rambling through the Zoo, exploring the Botanic Gardens where flowered
+borders and large stone urns are spilling over with brilliant color,
+watching the driving in the “Outer Circle,” or swelling the throng on
+the long Board Walk. Hundreds on these shady acres are taking their
+ease with all the unction of Arden:—
+
+    “Under the greenwood tree
+    Who loves to lie with me,
+    And tune his merry note,
+    Unto the sweet bird’s throat.”
+
+In all probability tremendous admiration is being expressed at
+aristocratic Hyde Park, as usual, for the broad reaches of velvety
+turf and the venerable oaks and elms. More than one will indulge a
+pleasant reverie over the dead and gone who have braved it there—Pepys
+in his new yellow coach, dainty ladies in powder and patches flashing
+sparkling eyes on the gallants, and the scented, unhappy beaux who have
+sighed with Shenstone along these _allées_:
+
+    “When forced from dear Hebe to go
+    What anguish I felt at my heart.”
+
+Across the Serpentine in the children’s paradise of Kensington Gardens
+we should find that the Board Walk and the “Round Pond” lose none of
+their drawing-power with the years and that the fountains and flowers
+are as beautiful and as highly prized as ever. There is the additional
+attraction of having a chance, by keeping a sharp eye on the tops of
+the tall ash-trees, of catching a glimpse of Peter Pan preparing to fly
+home to his mother’s window.
+
+The exclusive shades of Green Park and St. James’s have a convenient
+nearness that entices hundreds from the roaring thoroughfares of the
+neighborhood, and at this hour their old elms and graceful bowers
+give impartially of their repose and peace to hearts that are heavy
+and hearts that are gay. It would seem inevitable that thoughts must
+come of the royal and princely companies that once trod these ways—of
+Charles II, at least, strolling in St. James’s surrounded by his dogs,
+pausing a while to feed his ducks and then tripping gayly up the
+“Green Walk” for a chat with Nell Gwynn over the garden wall, while
+scandalized John Evelyn hurries home to make note in his journal of “a
+very familiar discourse between the King and Mrs. Nelly.”
+
+The London social season being at its height during May, June, and
+July, while Parliament is in session, belated clerks wending homeward
+between seven and eight o’clock find the great houses occupied and
+dinner-parties in progress with as much universality as a New York
+clerk, under like circumstances at home, would expect to see in
+December. All Mayfair, Belgravia, and Pimlico is indulging in feasting
+and merriment, and the austere aloofness of their retired squares,
+with central parks high-fenced in iron from contact with the “ordinary
+person,” is broken by the whirl of the carriages and motors of arriving
+guests. The sudden flood of soft lights from the reception hall as
+Hawkins throws open the door, and the quick and noiseless disappearance
+of the conveyances, is all of a moment and our clerk finds himself
+disconsolately gazing at the frowning front of some solid, ivy-grown,
+and altogether charming old mansion, through whose carefully-drawn
+window draperies only the slightest of beams dares venture forth to
+him. Were he to indulge such a passion for walking as characterized
+Lord Macaulay,—said to have passed through every street of London in
+his day,—he would find the same thing in progress at this hour in all
+the exclusive region that lies in the purlieus of Buckingham Palace.
+Dignity, riches, elegance, and power would be his in hasty, grudging
+glimpses—and then the dim square again and the high iron fence. The
+London square, indeed, seems decorative only—trees, turf, flowers, and
+the fence, and the surrounding houses playing dog-in-the-manager. This
+is not always without its bewilderment to foreigners; and so confirmed
+a traveler as Théophile Gautier puzzled over the matter considerably
+before he dismissed it with the conclusion that it is probably
+satisfaction enough to the owners to have kept other people out.
+
+If our clerk were to take the “tube” at Brompton Road and come out at
+Whitechapel Station in the East End, he would see the other side of the
+story with a vengeance. To quote Gautier again, “to be poor in London
+is one of the tortures forgotten by Dante.” Here the air is stifling
+with dirty dust, and thousands of miserable, unkempt creatures with
+wan and pasty faces feed, when they can muster a penny, on a choice
+of “black puddings,” pork-pies, “sheep-trotters,” or the mysterious,
+smoking “faggots.” In old Ratcliffe Highway, which is now St. George
+Street, they make out by munching kippers carried in hand as they go
+their devious ways. An occasional stale fish from Billingsgate is that
+much better than nothing. Yiddish seems to be the prevailing national
+tongue east of Aldgate Pump, and if you understand it there will be
+no trouble over the signs and announcements. With characteristic
+Hebrew thrift it is always “open season” for buyers. Each product
+has its special habitat. Toys or other sweatshop articles come from
+Houndsditch, shoes from Spitalfields, leather goods from Bermondsey,
+beef remnants from Smithfield, left-over poultry from Leadenhall,
+vegetable “seconds” from Covent Garden, birds are to be had in Club
+Row, meat and clothing in Brick Lane, and a general outfitting in
+Petticoat Lane which the reformers have rechristened Middlesex Street.
+As for a “screw o’ baccy” or a “mug o’ bitter,” the “pub” of any corner
+will answer. The University Settlement workers of Toynbee Hall are
+doing what men can to better conditions, but so have others tried for
+ages—yet here is the malodorous East End practically as unwashed and
+unregenerate as of old. The glimpses one catches of squalor and filth
+up narrow passages and of the damp and grimy “closes” that remind you
+of Hogarth’s drawings are apt to content the most curious, unless he be
+an insatiable investigator, indeed, and is willing to take his chances
+of being “burked.” Hand on pocket you thread narrow alleys where people
+are said to have been offered attractive bargains on their own watches
+when they reached the other end. Here after the day’s work is over and
+the “moke” and barrow safely stabled for the night, with a “Wot cher,
+chummy; ’ow yer ’oppin’ up?” our industrious coster friends, ’Arry
+and ’Arriet, make merry among pals at a “Free and Easy,” or lay out a
+couple of “thri’-p’ny bits” for seats in a local theatre, whence they
+emerge between acts for a “’arf-en’-’arf” or a “pot-o’-porter” with
+instant and painfully frank opinions if “it ’yn’t fustryte.” Dinner at
+“The Three Nuns,” of course, is only for state occasions. They are the
+people, just the same, to get most out of Hampstead Heath on a Bank
+Holiday or a picnic at Epping Forest any time. With them originated
+in days gone most of the catchy street-cries for which London was long
+curiously noted. But one hears no more “Bellows to Mend!” or “Three
+Rows a Penny Pins!” or “Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive oh!” or
+“Sweet Blooming Lavender, Six Bunches a Penny!” or “One a Penny, two
+a Penny, Hot Cross Buns!” or the traditional tune of “Buy a Broom!”
+or the barrow-woman’s “Ripe Cherries!” and “Green Rushes O!” You may,
+however, have a chance at “’Taters, all ’ot!” or “Three a Penny,
+Yarmouth Bloaters; ’ere’s yer Bloaters!” After all, it takes a very
+limited inspection of the East End to wish them all in Hyde Park, as
+the flag falls at seven-thirty, to join the hundreds of men and boys
+there who are out of their clothes before the signal is barely given
+and taking an evening plunge in the Serpentine.
+
+Between the truffles of Mayfair and the “faggots” of Whitechapel lies
+the region of the menu with which the average Londoner is most familiar
+and which he is now exploring with profound earnestness according to
+his lights and shillings. Dining, as every one knows, is an important
+expression of the British conscience, a solemn rite of well-nigh
+religious momentousness. The traditional fate of the uninvited guest is
+his in double measure who ventures to intrude between the Briton and
+his beef. One might “try it on,” perhaps, on the Surrey Side where they
+incline to “dining from the joint” around six o’clock—though nothing
+short of compulsion should take a sight-seer to South London after
+nightfall. The shabby Southwark shore of dingy wharves and grimy sheds
+is half concealed in drifting shadows raised by the uncertain light of
+flickering gas jets and the net results are not worth the trouble of
+walking London Bridge, unless we except the picture of quiet dignity
+and mellow beauty presented by the ancient church of St. Saviour. This
+rare old survivor finely expresses by night the subtle sense of a
+long-continued veneration and the finger-touches of the passing years.
+And to think that St. Saviour’s was doing parish duty and was a delight
+to look upon long before the Globe Theatre of Shakespearean fame had
+reared a neighboring head! But the gloom of the Surrey Side is thicker
+and more discomforting than the fog. Long, monotonous, cheerless
+streets, poorly lighted and scantily employed after dark, emerge from
+drab perspectives of gloaming and fade sullenly away into others. The
+scattered pedestrians one encounters reflect by solemn countenance the
+prevailing depression and seem able to take but little heart of courage
+as they go their melancholy ways. The whole region appears given over
+to breweries, potteries, factories, and hospitals. By night Lambeth
+Palace itself takes on the universal brewery aspect. You even detect
+a vatish look to the Greenwich Observatory and mistrust some trace of
+beer in the famous meridian. And then the tarry hotels of Greenwich
+must add their quota to the general dejection by offering everything
+in the world in the way of fish excepting its celebrated whitebait,
+which was, of course, the one thing you had come for. The lights of St.
+George’s Circus—the Leicester Square of South London—may be few in
+point of fact, but they seem highly exhilarating down there; nor are
+you to scorn the good cheer of the comfortable old tavern hard by that
+rejoices in the extraordinary name of “The Elephant and Castle.” There
+may also be a kindly feeling for the Old Kent Road where Chevalier’s
+coster “knock’d ’em,” but otherwise the breweries win. There is one
+on the sacred site of the old Globe Theatre, something like one where
+stood the Tabard Inn whence Chaucer started his immortal Pilgrims for
+Canterbury, and you will find a brazen gin palace if you search for
+“The White Hart Inn,” of “Henry VI” and “Pickwick Papers.” Poor old
+Southwark! Her glorious days of light have passed!
+
+    “And ‘she’ shakes ‘her’ feeble head,
+    That it seems as if ‘she’ said,
+    ‘They are gone.’”
+
+Even Southwark is not much duller at this hour than that ancient
+nucleus that is still styled the “City.” Where the leading commercial
+centres and money markets of the world were in frenzied activity,
+two or three hours ago, a few belated pedestrians now go clattering
+along echoing and deserted streets with an unhappy air of apology.
+No section of London undergoes so amazing a transformation each
+day; nor is any other so drear and cheerless by the suddenness of
+contrast—attesting the keenness of Lowell’s observation that nothing
+makes so much for loneliness as the sense of man’s departure. There is
+little dining now in the region where Falstaff once reveled at “The
+Boar’s Head” and the Shakespearean coterie at “The Mermaid Tavern.”
+The low, windowless, stolid Bank of England gropes like a blindman
+toward Wellington on his horse before the lofty Corinthian portico
+of the Royal Exchange, and the massive, sombre Mansion House of the
+Lord Mayor suggests some ruined temple of Paestum. “Gog” and “Magog”
+slumber in the dusty recesses of the old Guildhall, and the pigeons
+nest in its blackened eaves unstartled by the impassioned oratory of
+government ministers at banquets. But it is the time of times to attend
+the sweet chiming of Bow Bells, under the dragon in the beautiful tower
+that Wren built for St. Mary’s, and one could almost wish to have
+been born cockney if only to have heard them ringing from babyhood.
+The winding and gloomy little streets whose names recall so much in
+the lives of the Elizabethan literati entice one craftily, like so
+many Bow runners, into the purlieus of the Tower, within the shadows
+of whose momentous walls cabmen drowse securely on the boxes of dusty
+four-wheelers. To the imaginative stranger its bright fascination by
+day suffers a night-change into something gruesomely repellent, and
+the “beef-eaters” do not protect the crown jewels half so effectively
+as do the headless shades of Lady Jane Grey and Henry’s unhappy
+queens, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Doubtless there are safer
+thoroughfares on earth than Lower Thames Street in the early evening,
+but they would not lead to as diverting a neighborhood. The wharves
+and storehouses may not be as tumultuous as by day, but the fastidious
+wayfarer encounters at Billingsgate enough strength of language and
+odor to satisfy. Tom Bowling is entertaining Black-eyed Susan at some
+East End “hall,” but the “pubs” are roaring with “the mariners of
+England that guard our native seas.” Still, cutty-pipes are glowing
+at Wapping Old Stairs, and the heaving turmoil of the shipping in the
+“Pool,” with swaying riding-lights dotting the vast tangle of masts and
+cordage, prepares you for the shock of the amazing human wave that is
+ever surging with a ceaseless roar across old London Bridge. Caught in
+the strong current of that billow one washes back to Wellington and his
+horse and drifts aimlessly along under the raised awnings of the tailor
+shops of Cheapside, with scarce time for a grateful hand-wave to hushed
+and shadowed St. Augustine’s for the “Ingoldsby Legends” its former
+rector gave us, before he finds himself high and dry in Paternoster
+Row and the bookish churchyard of St. Paul’s. The great cathedral is
+imposing, without doubt, and no one would think of saying that Wren
+did not earn the two hundred pounds per annum he received during the
+thirty-five years it took him to build it;—and yet it can hardly be
+expected to appear over-cheerful by night, when it is chill and gloomy
+and repellent by day with the sun powerless to warm the tessellated
+floor and stiff, gloomy monuments with the brightest colors of its
+stained-glass windows—futile to rival even the moon in that vision of
+Keats as she
+
+    “Threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
+    Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
+    And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
+    And on her hair a glory, like a saint.”
+
+The moon, however, will aid us now in quickening into life the rich
+memories that adhere to the surrounding churchyard and to Paternoster
+Row, where so many generations of authors and publishers in dingy shops
+and inns and coffee-houses have debated the launching of immortal
+books. Every English-published volume must still start its race from
+neighboring Stationers’ Hall.
+
+The foolish stranger who chooses such an hour for a tramp about the
+“City” will breathe more freely, after he has exorcised the last
+whimpering shade of Newgate and “the poor prisoners of the ‘Fleet,’”
+as he hurries along Ludgate Hill and attains unto his heart’s desire
+at Fleet Street. Thence on, it is all the primrose way. No matter what
+the hour or season, he can never be companionless in the “Highway of
+Letters” for its very excess of material and immaterial presences.
+In its brief and narrow course of a few hundred yards, the richest
+in literary associations of any region on earth, the weather-beaten,
+irregular fronts of its old stone houses look down affectionately, and
+perhaps pityingly, on hurrying journalists and anxious authors, as
+they have been doing for ages. The leisurely diner of the old school
+who clings to the mellow places of inspiring associations is pretty
+sure to be going along Fleet Street at this time, intent on a chop and
+kidneys and a mug of stout at “The Cock,” preferred of Tennyson, or a
+beefsteak-pudding and toby of ale at the sand-floored “Cheshire Cheese”
+palpitant with memories of autocratic and snuffy Dr. Johnson exploding
+with “Sirs,” of good-natured Goldsmith, crotchety Reynolds, impassioned
+Burke, merry Garrick, and all the others of that deathless company. The
+usual evening idler and aimless stroller always makes Fleet Street a
+part of his pleasant itinerary, and it matters little to him that the
+sidewalks are narrow and the crowd uncomfortably large, when he can
+beguile each yard or two by lingering glances up dim and fascinating
+little rookery courts full of mysterious corners and deep shadows whose
+paving-stones have reëchoed the tread of so many sons of fame. The
+lights may not be as bright nor as numerous as in the Strand, nor the
+shops as attractive, but they are non-existent to the sentimentalist
+who is seeing Izaak Walton in his hosier shop at the Coventry Lane
+corner and Richard Lovelace in dingy quarters up Gunpowder Alley, and
+is peering wistfully through the arched gateway to the Temple for a
+glimpse of Lamb’s birthplace or Fielding’s home or Goldsmith’s grave or
+a sight of those delightful “old benchers,” brusque “Thomas Coventry,”
+methodical “Peter Pierson,” and gentle “Samuel Salt.” Doubtless he is
+able even to detect the rich aroma of the chimney-sweeps’ sassafras tea
+in the neighborhood of “Mr. Read’s shop, on the south side of Fleet
+Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street.”
+
+The shadows fall away with startling suddenness as Fleet Street becomes
+the Strand at Temple Bar. The jolliest uproar of all London storms
+impetuously along that modern Rialto all the way into Trafalgar Square.
+Brilliant lights, shop displays of every description, theatres, hotels,
+and restaurants create a profusion of excitement for the gay and
+jostling crowd that harries you perilously near to the curb and the
+heavy wheels of the ponderous busses.
+
+And what an amazing institution the London bus is! The Strand might
+still be the Strand if St. Mary’s and St. Clement Danes were effaced
+from its roadway, but what if the busses went! Gladstone’s partiality
+for these archaic contrivances was extreme, which naturally disposed
+Disraeli to take the other side and champion the fleeting hansom—“the
+gondola of London,” as he aptly styled it. And, indeed, much may be
+said in commendation of the omnipresence, economy, and convenience
+of the latter, and of its friendly way of flying to one’s aid at the
+merest raising of the hand to whisk you away at breakneck speed and
+through a thousand hairbreadth escapes to any possible destination
+you may indicate. But the majority vote with Gladstone, nevertheless,
+and take their ease on a bus-top. It is true that in the profusion
+of advertising signs you may not always be certain whether you
+are bound for Pear’s Soap or Sanderson’s Mountain Dew, but with
+blissful indifference you pocket the long ticket, and, ensconced
+among the glowing pipe-bowls in the dusk of a “garden-seat,” “rumble
+earthquakingly aloft.” What a delight it is to hear the cockney
+conductor drawl “Chairin’ Crauss,” “Tot’nh’m Court Rauwd,” “S’n
+Jimes-iz Pawk,” and the rest of it! From your heaving perch beside
+the ruddy-faced driver in his white high hat you observe that your
+ark keeps turning to the left,—the English rule of the road,—and
+that now you must look down instead of up to find the placards on the
+trolley posts that mark the stopping-places of the trams. You see
+belated solicitors and barristers hurrying out of the great gray courts
+of justice, and above the heads of the pedestrians you may study the
+gloomy arches of Somerset House or the ornate Lyceum where Sir Henry
+Irving reigned or the neat little Savoy where Gilbert and Sullivan won
+spurs and fortune. It is a great satisfaction to look down in comfort
+on the elbowing throng you have escaped, with its jostling and its
+stereotyped “I’m sorry,”—the top-hats and the caps, the actors,
+bohemians, professional men, tourists, tramps, beggars, thieves, Tommy
+Atkins in “pill-box” and “swagger,” blue-coated and yellow-legged boys
+of Christ’s Hospital, red-coated bootblacks, barmaids in turndown
+collars, well-dressed and shabbily-dressed women, as well as that
+particularly flashy brand to whom you return a “_Vade retro, Satanus!_”
+to her “Come to my arms, my slight acquaintance.” No wonder when
+Kipling’s “Private Ortheris” went mad of the heat in India that he
+babbled of the Adelphi Arches and the Strand!
+
+In the lull before the turning of the evening tide toward the opera and
+the theatre there is opportunity for each to indulge his _penchant_.
+What the shops of Fleet Street and the Strand show in general, the
+windows of specialists elsewhere are presenting in particular and
+with increased elaboration. Regent Street will draw the fanciers of
+pictures, leather goods, perfumes, and jewelry; Bond Street, rare
+paintings and choice porcelains; Wardour Street, curios and antiques;
+Stanway Street, silver and embroidery; Charing Cross Road, old
+bookstalls; and Hatton Garden, diamonds,—the same Hatton Garden that
+Queen Elizabeth gave a slice of to a favorite courtier and threatened
+the Bishop of Ely in a brief but sufficient note to hurry up with the
+necessary details or “I will unfrock you, by God!” This methodical
+fashion of grouping certain interests in definite localities is carried
+even further; as, for example, should you feel the need of a physician
+it is not necessary to wade through the thirty-five hundred pages of
+Kelly’s Post-Office Directory, but take a taxi to Harley Street where
+any house can supply you. No matter where you ramble, surprises and
+delights await you. It will be found so to those in particular who
+stroll down Oxford Street—with thoughts, perhaps, of De Quincey when a
+starved and homeless little boy groping a timorous and whimpering way
+down this street as he clutched the hand of his new acquaintance; or
+of Hazlitt’s dramatic struggle with hunger and poverty—and suddenly,
+on reaching High Holborn, catch their first glimpse of the picturesque
+beauty of mediæval Staple Inn. There are few lovelier spots in all
+London, and the sparrows still chatter there as clamorously every
+evening as they did when Dr. Johnson frowned up at them from the
+manuscript of “Rasselas,” or when Dickens lived and worked there, or
+when Hawthorne visited and revisited it with increasing delight.
+
+The princely spaces in the neighborhood of Buckingham Palace are quite
+as attractive at this hour as when the afternoon sun is warm along
+fair Piccadilly—“radiant and immortal street,” said Henley—and
+the gay coaches clatter back toward Trafalgar Square with blasts of
+horn and jangling chains. The Mall, the Grand Walk for ages, fairly
+exhales class and pride in the deepening dusk of the late English
+twilight. The clubmen of Pall Mall and St. James’s Street, in their
+fine, imposing old houses, are taking up the question of the evening’s
+amusements with as much bored listlessness by the aristocrats at
+Brooks’s as rakish enthusiasm by the country gentlemen of Boodle’s.
+Signs of approaching activity are even to be observed in the stately
+mansions of exclusive Park Lane—a street that half the business men of
+London hope to be rich enough to live in some day; so effectually has
+time effaced the memory of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild and the rest
+of the air-dancing specialists who figured here in chains in the days
+when Tyburn Hill was a name to shudder over.
+
+But the appeal of the “halls,” which began when the curtains of the
+Alhambra and the Pavilion went up at seven-thirty, grows almost
+imperative as the hour wears around toward eight. The rank of waiting
+cabs up the middle of Haymarket is thinned to the merest trickle.
+“Heavy swells” of clubdom and the West End are strolling in groups
+across the wide, statue-dotted expanse of Trafalgar Square, stopping
+to scratch matches on the lions of Nelson’s Column or General Gordon’s
+granite base. The artists are forsaking the studios of Chelsea, the
+real bohemians—not the pretenders of the Savage Club and the Vagabond
+dinners—the cheap restaurants and the performing monkeys of Soho, the
+students their quiet quarters in Bloomsbury and the forty miles of
+book-shelves of the British Museum, the musicians their Baker Street
+lodgings up Madame Tussaud’s way, the literary people their charming
+Kensington, and even the gay Italians are deserting the organ-grinding
+on Saffron Hill and the disorder of St. Giles—and all are rapidly
+moving on Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, and the Strand. There
+they will view the elaborate ballets according to their means; from
+the “pit” for a shilling, or from a grand circle “stall” for seven
+shillings sixpence, with another sixpence to the girl usher for a
+programme loaded with advertisements. It is the hour when Pierce Egan
+would have summoned “Tom and Jerry” to be in at the inaugural of the
+night life of the great city, and Colonel Newcome would have marched
+Clive out of the “Cave of Harmony” to hear less offensive entertainers
+at the “halls.” It is the time Stevenson’s “New Arabian Nights” has
+invested with the richest potentiality for adventure, and when, in
+consequence, any polite tobacconist is likely suddenly to disclose
+himself as a reigning sovereign in disguise. Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
+Watson, you may be sure, are never in their Baker Street lodgings at
+such a time as this. In the preliminary uproar about the bars of the
+favorite cafés and in the flashing of electric signs, glare of lights,
+and rush of hansoms and motors, one may discern the beginnings of “a
+night of it” for many whom the early sun will surprise with bleared
+eyes and battered top-hats about the coffee-booths of Covent Garden.
+And, indeed, unless you have access to a club, night-foraging is a
+highly difficult undertaking in London. Every restaurant closes down at
+half an hour after midnight; and thereafter, unless you come across a
+chance “luncheon-bar” that defies the authorities, or a friendly cabman
+introduces you to a “shelter,” you may have to content yourself with a
+hard-boiled egg at a coffee-stall. Many a sturdy Briton trudging along
+behind his linkman could have found better accommodation two hundred
+years ago when the watch went by with stave and lantern and cried out
+that it was two o’clock and a fine morning.
+
+With Big Ben in Parliament Watch Tower throwing his full thirteen tons
+into an effort to advise as many Londoners as possible that it is eight
+o’clock at last, and with a band concert in progress in the Villiers
+Street Garden of the Embankment, as agreeable a lounging-place as one
+could desire is the beautiful expanse of Waterloo Bridge. Not only
+is the prospect fair and inspiring, but the great bridge itself is
+worthy of it. Said Gautier, “It is surely the finest in the world”;
+said Canova, “It is worthy of the Romans.” Pallid and broad and long,
+and so level that its double lines of fine lights scarcely rise to the
+slightest of arcs, it rests with rare grace on its nine sweeping arches
+and spans the Thames just where the great bend is made to the east. One
+looks along it northward and sees the lamps of Wellington Street fade
+into the blurring dazzle of the Strand and Longacre, and southward to
+find the converging lights of Waterloo Road sending a bright arrow
+straight to the heart of Southwark. The greensward of the flowered
+and statued Embankment sweeps across and back on either side of its
+northern end, and palace hotels, Somerset House and the huge glass roof
+of Charing Cross Station bulk large at hand. Eastward the Ionic columns
+of Blackfriars Bridge and the strutting iron arches of Southwark Bridge
+stalk boldly across the serene river, and southwestward the broad arch
+of Westminster Bridge offers Parliament cheer to glum Lambeth. It would
+be the most natural mistake in the world to suppose the trim buildings
+of St. Thomas Hospital, on the Surrey bank, a favored row of handsome
+detached summer villas, with owners of strong political influence to be
+able to build on the fine long curve of the Albert Embankment, having
+no less a vis-à-vis than the terraces and glorious Gothic pile of
+Parliament buildings on their thousand feet of “noblest water front in
+the world.”
+
+Only the mind’s eye may look farther on to Chelsea and take note of the
+tall plane-trees of Cheyne Walk, and re-people the red brick terraces
+and homely old houses with Sir Thomas More entertaining Erasmus
+and Holbein, with Addison and Steele in revelry at Don Saltero’s
+coffee-house, with Byron at home in the amazing disorder of Leigh
+Hunt’s cottage, with Tennyson smoking long pipes with Carlyle, with
+Turner and Whistler bending over their palettes, and with Rossetti,
+Swinburne, and Meredith courting the Muses under a common roof and in a
+common brotherhood.
+
+[Illustration: LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE]
+
+To the observer on Waterloo Bridge the deep roar of the city comes
+out dulled and subdued. Bells chime softly and the whistles of the
+river-craft sound, from time to time, with sudden and startling
+shrillness. Long shafts of light shake out from either bank and spots
+of color from signal lamps dot the nearer rim. All outside is a
+bright dazzle, with patches of deep shadow and heavy ripples from the
+brown-sailed lighters and pert steamers that move across the shining
+reaches. The gloomy Southwark shore is blurred and uncertain in light
+mists, and the roof masses of the frowning city lift the ghostly
+fingers of Wren’s slender spires and cower beneath the indistinct and
+cloudlike silhouette of the dome of St. Paul’s. The prospect is that
+of a vast, confused expanse of indistinguishable, shadowy blending of
+buildings and foliage whose remoter verges merge into a soft violet
+blur, and over all of it rages a wild snowstorm of tiny pin-point
+lights. Under the arches of the bridge old Father Thames moves serenely
+seaward, the most ancient and yet ever the youngest member of the
+community. From his continual renewal of life one could believe that
+in some long-forgotten time he had won this reward when he, too, had
+achieved the Holy Grail among the stout knights up Camelot way “in
+the dayes of Vther pendragon when he was kynge of all Englond and so
+regned.” With true British reserve he whispers to a stranger no word
+of such secrets as once he confided at this bridge to Dickens, of the
+savagery and cruelty of this London that has driven so many of its
+desperate children to peace within his sheltering arms,—
+
+    “Mad with life’s history,
+    Glad to death’s mystery
+    Swift to be hurled—
+    Anywhere, anywhere,
+    Out of the world.”
+
+Looking from one of these bridges on the proud, powerful,
+self-sufficient city, Wordsworth was once moved to exclaim that “earth
+has not anything to show more fair.” Certainly it has few things
+to show more stirring and impressive, few to move the heart more
+profoundly, few that in achievement, resourcefulness, and power embody
+more completely to men of to-day
+
+  “The grandeur that was Rome.”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+NAPLES
+
+8 P.M. TO 9 P.M.
+
+
+Drifting lazily of a summer evening over the Bay of Naples in a brown
+old fishing felucca with a friendly ancient boatman for companion,
+careless of time or direction; the night winds soft; the moon clear;
+indolent boating-parties in joyous relaxation all about; languorous,
+plaintive songs of Italy near by and far away; Vesuvius glorious and
+mysterious in the purple offing, and the gray old city, touched with
+silver, beaming down from all her crescent hillsides,—here, indeed,
+is the stuff of which day dreams are compounded! Chimes in shadowy
+belfries take soft, musical notice of the hour; and my thoughts recede
+with those fading echoes and retrace the bright and pleasant stages
+that have led me this evening into an environment of such charm and
+romance.
+
+Thus, then, it was. Two hours ago, as I loitered along the crowded
+Via Caracciolo on the Bay front and watched Neapolitan Fashion
+take the air, I again encountered my Old Man of the Sea at his
+landing-place,—swarthy, wrinkled Luigi of the hoop earrings and
+faded blue trousers rolled to the knees. Little was he bothering
+his grizzled head over the frivolity that fluttered above him; and
+yet it was, in fact, a charming show. Old Luigi makes a mistake, in
+my opinion, in ignoring the elegant _passeggiata_; for afternoon
+promenading on the Caracciolo is something that most of Naples will do
+more than lift its head to see. Besides, what an attractive setting it
+has! The boasted park, the Villa Nazionale, arrays the western front
+in a pleasant old woods of broad and shady trees, along the water
+side of which stretches the handsome boulevard of the Caracciolo. The
+distinguishing mark is thus supplied to divide society between the
+carriage set who hector it here and along the Villa’s winding drives,
+and those lesser lights who venture to raise their heads secure from
+snubs in the promenading spaces under the trees and before the cafés
+and bandstand. With the latter, as the elders salute friends, renew
+acquaintances, and exchange civilities with jubilant exclamations,
+delighted shrugs, and storms of exultant gestures, the younger men,
+in flannel suits and foppish canes, flirt desperately by twirling
+their waxed little mustaches, and the snappy-eyed signorinas respond
+in kind by a subtle and discrete use of the fan. The contemplative
+promenader will stroll along the cool, statue-lined _allées_, issuing
+forth from time to time to enjoy the brisk music of the band. The
+hardened idler will take a mean delight in penetrating the retired
+and romantic retreats in the neighborhood of the Pæstum Fountain and
+thus arousing whole coveys of indignant lovers who have regarded this
+region as peculiarly their own from time immemorial; in the event of
+threatened reprisals the disturber can seek sanctuary in the renowned
+Aquarium, just at hand, and there spend his time to better advantage in
+contemplating octopi and sensitive plants, and all sorts of astonishing
+fishes. But the real show, of course, is _en voiture_. With a clatter
+and dash along they come: The _jeunesse dorée_, with straw hats cocked
+rakishly, shouting loudly to their horses and sawing desperately on
+the reins; young beauties in the latest word of milliner and modiste
+loll back in handsome victorias, reveling in the sensation they are
+creating, and with great black eyes flashing in curious contrast to the
+studied placidity of their quiet faces; consequential senators down
+from Rome; fat merchants trying to appear at ease; and all the usual
+remnants of the fashionable rout. On the wide sidewalks the promenaders
+proceed leisurely and with more good-humored democracy: prim little
+girls with governesses; romping schoolboys in caps of all colors;
+back-robed students; long-haired _artisti_; and priests by the score
+strolling sedately and gesturing earnestly with dark, nervous hands.
+
+To all this brave parade Luigi turns a blind eye and a deaf ear;
+but he always manages to see me, I have noticed. This afternoon his
+programme was the attractive one of a sail down to the Cape of Posilipo
+for a fish-dinner at a rustic little _ristoranti_, with the table to
+be spread under a chestnut-tree on a weathered stone terrace at the
+water’s edge where the spray from an occasional wave-top could spatter
+the cloth and I might fleck the ashes of my cigar straight down into
+the Bay. This old fellow can interest any one, I believe, when he
+wrinkles up into his insinuating and enthusiastic grin and plays that
+trump card, “And after dinner, if the signore wish, we can drift about
+the Bay or sail over toward Capri and Sorrento.” Naturally, this is my
+cue to enter. Into the boat I go; off come hat, coat, collar, and tie,
+and up go sleeves to the shoulder. I am allowed the tiller, and the
+genial old fisherman stretches at his ease beside the slanting mast
+and lights a long, black, quill-stemmed cheroot. Now for comfort and
+romance and all the delights of Buchanan Read’s inspired vision:
+
+          “I heed not if
+          My rippling skiff
+    Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;—
+          With dreamful eyes
+          My spirit lies
+    Under the walls of Paradise.”
+
+[Illustration: THE BAY OF NAPLES]
+
+From all garish distractions our little boat bore us in rippling
+leisure along the picturesque Mergellina front and under the long,
+villa-dotted heights of the Posilipo hillside, whose shadows crept
+slowly out on the waters as Apollo drove his flaming chariot beyond the
+ridge to seek the dread Sibyl of Cumæ. Nature has always been partial
+to her gay, irresponsible Naples, and this afternoon she seemed
+resolved to outdo herself in clothing it with charm and beauty. Under
+the setting sun the entire sky over Posilipo became a gorgeous riot of
+crimson and gold, and the opposite Vesuvian shore basked with indolent
+Oriental listlessness in a brilliant deluge that penetrated the deepest
+recesses of its vineyards and fruited terraces. Through this magic
+realm of richest color we floated lightly, silently responsive to the
+varying phases of the calm and glorious sunset hour. In deepest content
+
+          “my hand I trail
+    Within the shadow of the sail.”
+
+The region to which we lifted our eyes is one of veritable
+poet-worship. How incredible to think that on this hillside Lucullus
+has lived and Horace strolled and Virgil mused over his deathless
+verse! Look again, and under a clump of gnarled old trees one sees the
+latter’s venerated tomb. Over these waters came the pious Æneas with
+his Trojan galleys to question the Cumæan Sibyl; and since the age of
+fable what fleets of Carthage have passed around Cape Miseno, what
+barks of savage pirates, what brazen triremes of Rome, what armadas of
+Spain and navies of all the world! It staggers the mind to attempt to
+recall the scenes of war and pillage that have been enacted under the
+frowning brows of these storied hills during the last three thousand
+years.
+
+The wonderful sail was all too brief, and almost before I was aware
+the goal was at hand, and I stepped ashore at the _ristoranti_
+approved of Luigi and entered upon the promised joys. It was all as
+he had predicted; with possibly the exception of a few details he
+had discreetly neglected to warn me against. That it required four
+determined efforts and a threat of police to get the proper change when
+I came to settle the bill is really no jarring memory at all. It is the
+usual experience with the “forgetful” Neapolitan restaurant keeper. And
+what are foreigners for, anyway? And was it not worth something extra
+to have dined face to face with this glittering Bay, with the panorama
+of Naples on one hand and a sunset over Cape Miseno on the other? So
+with many bows and mutual civilities I parted with the zealous boniface
+and rejoined the waiting felucca. A light shove, and the shadows of
+the terrace fell behind us and we were out again on the Bay. Such are
+the alluring stages, among others, that may bring one eventually to an
+evening’s moonlight sail at Naples.
+
+Just now the bells rang eight. Luigi grows sentimental. Again he
+declines my cigars, stretches at his ease and produces another quilled
+specimen of government monopoly such as, when at home, he lights at the
+end of a smouldering rope dangling in a tobacco shop of the Mercato.
+In the gathering gloom one sees little now of the trellised paths of
+Posilipo, the white marble villas with their balconies and terraces, or
+the brilliant clustering roses gay against the glossy green of groves
+of lemons and oranges. In the darkness of the firs each cavern and
+grotto of this legend-haunted headland disappears and one can barely
+make out the wave-washed Rock of Virgil, at the farthest extremity,
+where, the Neapolitans will tell you, the poet was wont to practice his
+enchantments. The ruddy sky pales over the mouth of Avernus and the
+Elysian Fields, and Apollo abandons us to Diana and the broad flecking
+of the lights of Parthenope. We swing a wide circle in the offing.
+Between us and the distant rim of water-front lamps hundreds of light
+craft are idly floating. Romantic, pleasure-loving Naples has dined
+and taken to the water, to cheer its heart with laughter and song.
+Like glowworms the lights of the little boats lift and sway with the
+movement of the waves; while seaward, the drifting torches of fishermen
+flare in search of _frutti di mare_.
+
+Like an aged beauty Naples is at her best by night, when the ravages of
+time are concealed. Lights glitter brightly along the shore line from
+Posilipo to Sorrento and all over the hillsides, and even beyond Sant’
+Elmo and the low white priory of San Martino the palace-crowned heights
+of Capodimonte, where the paper-chases of early spring afford so much
+diversion to the young gallants of the court. Popular restaurants up
+the hillsides are marked by groups of colored lights. A thick spangle
+of lamps proclaims the progress of some neighborhood _festa_. The moon
+is full; the sky brilliant with enormous stars. In the distance the
+curling smoke of Vesuvius glows with a sultry red or fades fitfully
+into gloomy tones, as suits that imperious will which threescore of
+eruptions have rendered absolute. But, as all the world knows, this
+aged beauty of a city that “lights up” so well by night is far from
+“plain” by day. Then appears the charm and distinction of the original
+way she has of parting her hair, as it were, with the great dividing
+rocky ridge that runs downward from Capodimonte to Sant’ Elmo and then
+on to Pizzofalcone, “Rock of the Falcon.” She even secures a coquettish
+touch in the projecting point, like an antique necklace pendant, at the
+centre of her double-crescented shore, where juts a low reef and at its
+end rests the ancient, blackened Castello dell’Ovo,—on a magically
+supported egg, they say,—the accredited theatre of so many extravagant
+adventures. And by day she looks down in indolent content through the
+half-closed eyes of ten thousand windows and surveys a glorious sea of
+milky blue, brimming tawny curving beaches crowned with white villas
+in luxuriant groves and vineyards, expanding in turquoise about soft
+headlands and dim precipices, and bearing, on its smooth, restful bosom
+in the far, faint offing, magical islands of pink and pearl that seem
+no more than tinted clouds.
+
+A shoal of skiffs hangs under the black hull of a belated liner, whose
+rails are crowded with new arrivals delighted at so picturesque and
+enthusiastic a reception, and whose silver falls merrily into the
+inverted umbrellas of the boys and girls who are singing and dancing
+in the little boats by the light of flaming torches. Very shortly these
+visitors will learn that the interest they excite in Neapolitans is
+to be measured very strictly in terms of ready cash. Secretly, they
+will be despised. There is no smile-hid rapacity comparable with that
+encountered here. The incoming steamer has not yet warped into her
+berth before the Neapolitan has begun his campaign for money. Beggars
+crawl out on the pier flaunting their hideous deformities and wailing
+for _soldi_, and insulting cabmen lie in ambush at the gates. At no
+other port does a foreigner disembark with so much embarrassment. He
+goes ashore feeling like a lamb marked for the shearing, and lives
+to fulfill the expectation with humiliating dispatch. It has to be
+admitted, on the other hand, that the customs-officers occasionally
+catch strange flashes of transmarine interests that must puzzle them
+not a little. As an instance, the first person to land from the steamer
+I was on was a young American athlete in desperate quest of the latest
+daily paper, and bent, as we presumed, upon securing instant word of
+some matter of great and immediate importance. He succeeded; but what
+was our astonishment to behold him a minute later leap and shout for
+joy and announce to every one about him that Princeton had again won
+the Yale baseball series and remained the college champions!
+
+Naples, to-night, is vibrant with song; faithful to her ancient
+myth of the nymph Parthenope, whose sweet singing long lured men to
+destruction until Ulysses withstood it and the chagrined goddess cast
+herself into the sea and perished and her body floated to these shores.
+Parthenope’s children here do not destroy people by their singing now,
+but rather delight and revitalize them. Mandolins and guitars are
+throbbing softly on every hand and the old familiar songs of Naples
+fill the air. “Traviata,” “Trovatore,” and the “Cavalleria” reign
+prime favorites. To be sure, there is no escaping the linked sweetness
+of the wailing “Sa-an-ta-a Lu-u-ci-a,” nor that notion of perpetual
+and hilarious youth conveyed in the ubiquitous “Funiculì-Funiculà.”
+In martial staccato, as of old, Margarita, the love-lorn seamstress,
+is jestingly warned against Salvatore,—“_Mar-ga-rì, ’e perzo a
+Salvatore!_”—and the skittish “Frangese” recites for the millionth
+time the discouraging experience of the giddy young peddler who
+undertook to barter his “pretty pins from Paris” in exchange for kisses
+that would only bring “a farthing for five” in Paradise. More than one
+singer is deploring the heartless coquetry of “La Bella Sorrentina,”
+while as many more appeal amorously to the charming Maria with promises
+of “beds of roseleaves,”—
+
+          “Ah! Maria Marì!
+    Quanta suonna che perdo pe te!”
+
+We take an æsthetic interest in the Pagliaccian ravings of Canio, and
+grieve for the “little frozen hands” of “La Bohème”; while, by way of
+contrast, all the peace and serenity of moonlight comes to us in the
+chaste, stately measures of the pensive “Luna Nova.” Serenades seem
+twice serenades when breathed in the soft, lissome dialect of Naples.
+There is no tiring of the impassioned refrain of “Sole Mio”:—
+
+    “Ma n’ atu sole
+      Cchiu bello, ohinè,
+    ’O sole mio
+      Sta nfronte a te!”
+
+And what sufficient word can be said of the lovely “A Serenata d’ ’e
+Rrose”? It is impossible not to rejoice with these soulful tenors in
+that
+
+    “The glinting moonbeams look like silver pieces
+    Flung down among the roses by the breezes,”—
+
+or to respond to the plaintive intensity of the appealing cry:—
+
+    “Oj rrose meje! Si dorme chesta fata
+    Scetatela cu chesta serenata!”
+
+Like old Ulysses, the swift little felucca soon stops its ears to these
+fascinating distractions, and bears Luigi and me off into the purple
+darkness. The prison-capped rock of Nisida drops astern with all its
+august memories of Brutus and his devoted Portia, and its repugnant
+ones of Queen Joanna, the very bad, and King Robert, the very good.
+In the moonlit path the distant cliffs of Procida, isle of romance
+and beauty, loom afar, but we distinguish no faintest echo of the
+bewildering _tarantella_ music that is danced there in its perfection.
+What a different spectacle its observers are enjoying from the stale
+perfunctory performances of the Sorrento hotels, which the tourists
+see at two dollars a head. For the _tarantella_, well done, is the
+intensest and most expressive of dances. All the emotions of the lover
+and his coquettish sweetheart are aptly portrayed—the advances,
+rebuffs, encouragements, slights, and final triumph. The Procida dance
+is a revelation when rendered out of sheer delight—_con amore_, as the
+Italians say.
+
+An occasional faint light marks dissolute Rome’s favorite place of
+revelry, Baiæ the magnificent. In its heyday every house, as we read,
+was a palace; and it has been said that every woman who entered it a
+Penelope came out a Helen. Through their faded green blinds no light
+may be seen in the yellow stone houses of neighboring Puteoli where
+Paul, Timothy, and Luke took refuge in the early days of the Faith.
+Stolid pagan Rome had little time for them, considering that Cumæ was
+just around the headland, with Dædalus landing from his flight from
+Crete and the frantic Sibyl, at the very Jaws of Avernus, screaming her
+“Dies iræ! Dies illa!”
+
+Distant Ischia appears a huge ghostly blot, mysterious and solemn.
+Scarce an outline can be caught of its fabled, crag-hung castle,
+chambered as the very nautilus and eloquent of the unhappy Vittoria
+Colonna. How often has Michael Angelo climbed with sighs that old stone
+causeway where now the fishermen mend their blackened nets! Ischia
+never wants for devotees, however, and already a quarter-century has
+sufficed to dull the horror of that July night when Casamicciola paid
+its quota of three thousand lives to the dread greed of the earthquake.
+To-day one lingers, undisturbed by such memories, amidst the pretty
+whitewashed cottages set in olive groves and vineyards, loiters among
+the picturesque straw plaiters of Lacco, or dreams to the drowsy tinkle
+of goat bells in the myrtle and chestnut groves on the slopes of Mont’
+Epomeo.
+
+Shadowy Capri, isle of enchantment, lies soft and dim off the Sorrento
+headland as we swing our little vessel toward the city. It seems only
+a delightful dream that a few mornings ago my _déjeuner_ was served
+on a cool terrace of the Quisisana there, and that I looked down over
+the coffee-urn on olive groves and sloping hillsides green with famous
+vineyards. With joy I relive the row around its precipitous shores, the
+eerie swim in the elfland of the Blue Grotto, the drive down the white,
+dusty road from the lofty perch of Anacapri to the pebbly beaches of
+Marina Grande, before a fascinating, unfolding panorama of verdant
+lawns, fruited terraces, snowy villas, and bold cliffs crowned with
+fantastic ruins. Sinister Tiberius and his unspeakable companions have
+small place in our permanent memories of Capri; one is more apt to
+recall the charming blue and white Virgin in the cool grotto beside the
+old Stone Stairs.
+
+A faint rim of lights on the mainland marks Sorrento, and a patch
+nearer the city, Castellammare; and were we nearer, the great white
+hotels would doubtless be found brilliant and musical. Could we but
+see it now, we should find the moonlit statue of Tasso in the little
+square vastly more tolerable than by day, and this would be a pleasant
+hour to spend on the old green bench before it absorbed in stirring
+thoughts of the “Gerusalemme Liberata” in the place where its author
+was born. Monte Sant’ Angelo looms above Castallammare spectre-like
+in night shadows, and the royal ilex groves must be taken on faith.
+The crested hoopoes, crowned of King Solomon, have long been asleep on
+the mountain-sides, but Italian Fashion, devoted to its Castellammare,
+having idled and rested all day in the _bagni_, now flirts and dances
+at the verandaed _stabilimenti_. An occasional faint breath of
+fragrance recalls the floral luxuriance that is so notable here—the
+gorgeous scarlet geraniums, snowy daturas, cactus, and aloe, festoons
+of smilax, and the carmine oleanders that they call “St. Joseph’s
+Nosegay.”
+
+Far away to the southeastward, vague and ghostly headlands are dimming
+toward regions of rarest beauty—Amalfi, Majori, Cetara, Salerno.
+In our happy thoughts the smooth, white Corniche road lies like a
+delicate thread along the green mountain-sides,—those Mountains of the
+Blest, whose rounded brows home the nightingale, whose shoulders are
+terraces of fruits of the tropics and whose storied feet rest eternally
+on white beaches that glisten in the blue waters of a matchless bay.
+A memory this, compounded of pebbly, curving shores sweeping around
+soft, distant headlands; lustrous groves of pomegranates and oranges;
+picturesque fishing hamlets of little stone houses nestled away in
+deep, shady inlets; the patter and shuffle of barefooted women trotting
+steadily through the dust under great hampers of lemons; sunburned
+workmen singing homeward through the dusk; the shouts and laughter
+of bare-headed fishermen drawing their red-bottomed boats up on the
+shore; and the low, contented singing of your Neapolitan coachman
+who, as twilight falls, looks long and dreamily out to sea and no
+longer cracks his whip over the weary little Barbary ponies that are
+drawing you up the dusty heights toward the cool rose-pergola of the
+Cappuccini. Visitors, reluctantly departing, will never forget this
+land “where summer sings and never dies,” and must ever after feel with
+Longfellow:—
+
+    “Sweet the memory is to me
+    Of a land beyond the sea,
+    Where the waves and mountains meet,
+    Where, amid her mulberry-trees,
+    Sits Amalfi in the heat,
+    Bathing ever her white feet
+    In the tideless summer seas.”
+
+We distinguish Torre Annunciata, abreast of our speeding boat, by
+the evil redolence of its swarming fish markets and the boisterous
+shouting of its many children at _mora_; and, in striking contrast, one
+thinks of grim Pompeii, farther inland,—“la città morta,”—hushed and
+prostrate in moonlit desolation. At the neighboring Torre del Greco we
+can fancy the coral fishers, who may not yet have left for the season’s
+diving off Sicily, to be smoking black cheroots along the wharves and
+planning lively times when they market their coral and Barbary ponies
+in November. Certainly there is little to suggest the peace that
+Shelley found here. Few shores are more dramatic than those of this
+Vesuvian Campagna Felice. Resina hangs gloomily over the entrance to
+the entombed Herculaneum, and Portici lights up but half-heartedly,
+abashed that all her royal Bourbon palaces should now be housing only
+schoolboys. About both villages and for miles inland any one may see
+the wrath of Vesuvius in dismal evidence in twisted lava rock of
+weird and sinister shapes. But there is a fullness of life on these
+shores to-night, increasing as our boat advances; individual houses
+multiply into villages, and villages overlap into a solid mass that
+is Naples’s East End. We pick our way among the clustering boats, and
+around long piers with little lighthouses at their ends, and presently
+Luigi abandons his cheroot, stands up by the mast and shouts shrill and
+mysterious hails, and shortly up we come to our landing at a flight of
+dripping stone steps at the tatterdemalion Villa del Popolo, sea-gate
+to the noisiest, dirtiest, most crowded (and so most characteristic)
+section of all Naples. A passing of silver from me, from Luigi a
+twisted smile and a regretful “buon riposo,”—the last, I fear, that I
+shall ever hear from him,—and I take leave of my amiable companion for
+the sputtering lights and exciting diversions of the swarming Carmine
+Gate and Mercato. From the tide-washed Castello dell’ Ovo to the prison
+heights of Sant’ Elmo and the charming cloisters of San Martino, and
+from the huts of the Mergellina fishermen to far beyond where I am
+standing on the eastern front of the city, all Naples is sparkling with
+lights and humming with an intense and multi-phased tumult.
+
+Lucifer falling from Paradise must have experienced some such
+contrast as those who exchange the serene evening beauty of the Bay
+of Naples for the odors, uproar, and confusion of the Mercato. But
+does not the saying run, “See Naples and die”? And to miss visiting so
+characteristic a district by night is almost to fail to see “Naples”
+at all; though it may, perhaps, appear at first glance to assure the
+“and die.” The quay of Santa Lucia is the only other section that even
+attempts to rival this in preserving unimpaired the “best” traditions
+of Neapolitan uproar and picturesque squalor. And it must be remembered
+that one’s interest in this city is like that felt for a pretty,
+bright, and amiable child who is, at the same time, a very ragged
+and dirty one. Life, as it is found in the Mercato, is exuberance
+_in extenso_; the most complete conception possible of a “much ado
+about nothing.” It is an irrelevant tumult in which matter-of-fact
+inconsequences are expressed with an incredibly disproportionate use
+of shoulders, fingers, and lungs. An inquiry as to the time of day
+is attended with a violence of gesticulation adequate to convey the
+emotions of Othello slaying Desdemona; an observation on the weather
+involves a pounding of the table and a wild flourish of arms like the
+expiring agony of an octopus. Even work itself seems half play in its
+accompaniment of romantic posturing, eloquent and profuse gestures, and
+continual over-bubbling of merriment, quarrels, and song. All this is
+of the very essence of the Mercato—hopelessly tattered and unkempt,
+artlessly unconscious of its picturesque rags, and altogether so
+frankly frowzy and disheveled as to become, upon the whole, positively
+charming. No one equals the Neapolitan in expressing the full force of
+the Scotch proverb, “Little gear the less care.”
+
+In appearance the Mercato is a rabbit-warren of tortuous chasms lined
+with dowdy structures in every advanced stage of decrepitude. Even its
+lumbering churches of Spanish baroque rather add to than detract from
+this effect. No money is squandered on upkeep. The cost of initial
+construction is here like an author’s definitive edition,—final.
+Little, cramped balconies, innocent of paint, blink under the
+flapping of reed-made shades, shop signs are illegible from dirt and
+discoloration, and the weathered house-fronts shed scales of plaster
+as snakes do skins. The very skies are overcast with clouds of other
+people’s laundry. Dead walls flame with lurid theatre posters, unless
+warned off by the “post-no-bills” sign—the familiar “è vietata l’
+affissione.” Cheap theatres are completely covered with life-size
+paintings illustrating scenes from the play for the week. Lottery signs
+abound. Certain window placards, by their very insistence, eventually
+become familiar and homelike; as, for instance, the “first floor to
+let,” the omnipresent “si loca, appartamento grande, 1^o primo,” for
+which one comes in time to look as for a face from home. Religion
+contributes a garish and tawdry decorative feature in the little gaudy
+shrines on street corners and house-fronts, where, in a sort of shadow
+box covered with glass, candles sputter before painted saints. The
+government monopolies, salt and tobacco, the Siamese Twins of Italy,
+are inseparable with their ever-lasting “Sale e Tabacchi” signs and
+dwell together everywhere on a common and friendly footing, like the
+owls, snakes, and prairie dogs in Kansas.
+
+Curiosity fairly plunges a man into so promising a field, and Adventure
+stalks at his elbow. He finds the narrow, squalid streets brimming
+with a restless, noisy, nervous swarm. Picturesque qualities are
+brought out in the play of feeble street lamps and the dejected,
+half-hearted lights of dingy, cavernous shops and eating-places. A
+_comme il faut_ costume for men appears to be limited to trousers
+and shirt, with the latter worn open to the belt. The women affect
+toilettes of a general dirty disarray which their laudable interest
+in the life around frequently leads them absent-mindedly to arrange
+in the quasi-retirement of the doorways, the front sill itself being
+reserved for the popular diversion of combing the hair of their spawn
+of half-naked children. To traverse an alley and avoid stepping on some
+rollicking youngster _in puris naturalibus_ is vigorous exercise of
+the value of a calisthenic drill. Still, it is possible to escape the
+babies, but scarcely the fakirs and beggars. The fakir has odds and
+ends of everything to sell and teases for patronage for love of all
+the saints; one even awaits the Oriental announcement, “In the name of
+the Prophet, figs!” The beggars, of course, are worse; crawling across
+your path and dragging themselves after you to display their physical
+damages, often self-inflicted, in quest of a _soldo_ of sympathy.
+Express compassion in other than monetary terms and you get it back
+instanter, along with a dazing assortment of vitriolic maledictions. As
+the visitor’s patience gives way under the strain, it presently becomes
+a very pretty question as to whose language is the most horrific, his
+own or the beggar’s.
+
+Women dodge through the streets carrying great bundles on their
+heads, and pause from time to time for friendly greetings with frowzy
+acquaintances tilting out of the upper windows where the laundry
+hangs. It is from these mysterious upper windows that the housewife
+in the morning lowers a pail and a bit of money wrapped in a piece of
+newspaper, and bargains with the leather-lunged _padulano_ when he
+comes loafing along beside his panniered donkey, crying his wares in
+that “carrying voice” we all admire in our opera singers. Those are
+the hours of trying domestic exaction, when the woman who does not
+care for water in the milk watches the production of the raw material
+with the cow standing at the doorway, or from the frolicsome goat
+that nimbly ascends every flight of stairs to the very portal of the
+combined kitchen and sleeping-room. But just now neighbors are shouting
+conversations in those same upper windows, or calling down to the women
+and girls who go shuffling along on the lava pavement below in wooden
+sabots that look like bath-slippers—if, indeed, one has imagination
+enough to think of bath-slippers in this vicinity.
+
+Restless activity prevails. The most unnatural things are the statues,
+chiefly because they do not move. One catches glimpses of them now
+and then in the niches of the motley-marbled churches,—churches of
+memories grave and gay, of Boccaccio’s first glimpse of Fiammetta, or
+the slaying of the young fisherman-tribune, Masaniello, whom Salvator
+Rosa delighted to paint. There is buying and selling, eating and
+drinking. There are fruit stands and lemonade stalls and macaroni
+stores and dejected little shops with festoons of vegetables pendent
+from the smoky ceilings over whose home-painted counters weary women
+await custom with babies in their arms. A brisk demand prevails for the
+famous cheese-flavored biscuit called “pizza,” set with little powdered
+fish, and those who desire can have a slice of devilfish-tentacle
+for a _soldo_, which the purchaser dips in the kettle of hot water
+and devours on the spot. Should this latter fare disagree with any
+one, there will be access on the morrow to the miracle-working “La
+Bruna”—the picture of the Virgin in the church of St. Mary of the
+Carmine—which every child in Naples knows was painted by St. Luke;
+and if that should fail, there is still the liquefying blood of St.
+Januarius in the inner shrine of the cathedral.
+
+Happily, the senses are more than four; and when seeing, smelling,
+tasting, and feeling fail from over-exertion in the Mercato, still
+hearing remains, so that one may study the Sicilian-like prattle of the
+Neapolitan in all its ramifications from a whisper to a shriek. The
+character of the man is expressed along with it; and thus one observes
+that while a Piedmontese may be steady and industrious, a Venetian
+gossipy and artistic, a Tuscan reserved and frugal, and a Roman proud
+and lordly, the Neapolitan is merry, loquacious, generous, quarrelsome,
+superstitious, and, too frequently, vicious. Thus the Mafia flourishes
+with him, and the Camorra, an unbegrudged possession, is wholly his
+own. His _vendetta_ may, perhaps, be mildly defended on the ground that
+it is, at least, only a personal affair, and certainly less foolish
+and reprehensible than the perennial jealousy of an entire people, as,
+for example, the ancient feud between Florence and Siena, where an
+inherited antagonism is still devoutly cherished and the old battle of
+Montaperti refought with fury every morning. The Neapolitan had rather
+spend that time on the lottery, dream his lucky numbers, look them up
+in his dream-book, and go to the Saturday afternoon drawings with a
+fresh and stimulating interest in life.
+
+It is a nice question whether the Mercato loves singing best, or
+eating—when it can get it. At night one inclines to the latter view.
+There is a prodigious hubbub around all the open-air cooking-stoves and
+in every smoky _trattoria_ and family eating-place. One would scarcely
+hazard an opinion as to the number of bowls of macaroni, quantities
+of _polenta_, and whole nations of snails and frogs that are being
+devoured between appreciative gestures and puffs of cigarettes, and
+washed down unctiously with _minestra_ soup and watery wines. But as
+all these good people have probably breakfasted solely on dry bread and
+black coffee, no one would think of begrudging them the delight they
+are taking in dining so gayly and at so modest an outlay. If stricter
+economy becomes necessary later, they will patronize the charity
+“kitchens,” where soup, vegetables, meat, and wine are supplied at
+cost, or perhaps some friend will give them a voucher and they will be
+able to get it all for nothing.
+
+So far as economy is concerned, they know all there is to be learned
+on the subject. Several families of them will live in a single room;
+and when that room is the damp, foul cellar they call _fondaco_, it
+is something one does not care to think of a second time. When they
+indulge in street-car riding they never neglect to take the middle
+seats, because they are the cheapest. They know all about the market
+for restaurant scraps and cigar stumps, where quotations are governed
+by length.
+
+Their extraordinary generosity to one another in times of distress is
+almost proverbial. Misery both fascinates and touches them, perhaps
+because it is never very far from their own doors. One morning I
+shouldered my way into the middle of a strangely silent crowd and found
+there a weeping crockery vender whose entire stock in trade had been
+demolished by some mishap. It meant his temporary ruin, as could be
+seen from the faces of the painfully silent and sympathetic audience.
+The peddler seemed utterly stunned by his misfortune and lay on the
+ground with his face in his arms. How touching it was to see the little
+cup that some one had significantly set beside him, and to know that
+every copper-piece that fell into it came from Poverty’s Very Self,
+and bore the message, “It’s hard, poor fellow; we know how hard; but
+here’s a little something—try again.”
+
+But, as Thomas Hardy’s peasants say, it is time to go “home-along.”
+Emerging from the noisy congestion of the Mercato the quiet and cool
+of the water front is rather more than refreshing. The shipping
+along the Strada Nuova stands out stately and picturesque, silvered
+toward the moon and black in the dense shadows. Harbor lights sparkle
+brightly under the solemn eye of the _molo_ lighthouse. The military
+pier points a long, black finger warningly toward Vesuvius. Along the
+Strada del Piliero one has pleasant choice of viewing on the left the
+animated steamer piers and the secure anchorage where the great ships
+for Marseilles and the Orient tug mildly at their hawsers, or seeing
+on the right the ceaseless activity of swarming little streets, some
+glowing in arbors of colored lights in celebration of a neighborhood
+_festa_ and others observing a milder form of the same noisy programme
+we have just forsaken. On the broad Piazza del Municipio the massive
+and heavy-towered Castello Nuovo rears a sombre and storied front; and
+farther along we pass the vast gray bulk of the famous Teatro San Carlo
+and the lofty crossed-arcade of the Galleria Umberto I, and skirting
+the corner of the Royal Palace enter the broad and brilliant Piazza del
+Publiscito.
+
+Contrasts again! What a different crowd from that of the poor Mercato.
+Here is a groomed and well-conducted multitude that has come out
+to enjoy its coffee and cigarettes as it listens to the band in the
+pavilion on the western side or the open-air melodrama in that on the
+east. And what a change in surroundings! Palaces and splendid churches
+and public buildings, now. Solemn effigies of departed kings stare
+stonily down from niches in the moonlit façades. A fringe of dark-eyed
+boys lounges in indolent content around the coping of a fountain.
+Hundreds of chairs and tables throng the open space, and we gladly rest
+on one of them and experiment with Nocera and lemon juice, preparatory
+to a good-night stroll up the Toledo. Enthusiasm prevails here, too.
+Familiar melodies from the old operas are welcomed with storms of
+applause and shouts of “Bravo” or “Bis”; whereupon the conductor bows
+profound gratification and selects the music for the next number with a
+face glowing with pride. Politeness abounds. The air is gracious with
+“grazie,” and like expressions of courtesy. Ask a light for your cigar,
+and the Neapolitan raises his hat and thanks you, supplies the match,
+raises his hat and thanks you again, though all the while he has been
+doing the service. Indeed, he seems capable of expressing more civility
+by a touch of the hat than we can by completely doffing ours. One looks
+about and concludes that the women are not particularly pretty and that
+good dressing is a lost art with them. The men, as a rule, impress one
+more favorably; though they are perversely inclined to spoil their good
+looks by waxing their mustaches to a needle-point and trimming their
+long beards square, like bas-reliefs of Assyrian kings.
+
+It is nearly nine o’clock. I settle for my drink, leave the usual
+centesimi with the bowing waiter, and plunge into the Broadway of
+Naples, the renowned Toledo. Its map-name is Via Roma, but the “Toledo”
+it has been for ages and as such it will remain to many Neapolitans
+to the end of time. It is a busy and peculiar street. Rows of raised
+awnings in two long, converging lines dress the feet of tall, dark
+buildings that are studded with shallow iron balconies filled with
+pots of flowers. It is comparatively narrow and with sadly straitened
+sidewalks, but no street in Naples is so long or so continually used;
+if it is followed, through all its changes of names, it will carry one
+past the Museo and away up to the very doors of the summer palace at
+Capodimonte, running due north all the way. Shops of all descriptions
+line it, and it is thronged to the overflow of the sidewalks and the
+hysterical abuse of distracted cabmen in the middle of the street. One
+thinks of Paris when he sees the newspaper kiosks and the many bright
+little stands decked out with fruit and gay trifles. The shops satisfy
+any taste and any purse, for it is the common gathering-ground of
+Naples.
+
+It is vastly diverting to step aside and take note of the varieties
+of people that troop along this brilliant highway. One sees jaunty
+naval cadets from Leghorn; street dandies in white duck and tilted
+Panamas; delivery boys in long blue blouses; tattered and bare-headed
+bootblacks, with sleeves rolled up in business fashion; _artisti_ in
+greasy coats; minor government officials in spectacles and rusty black,
+trying to be rakish on four hundred dollars a year; sub-lieutenants,
+with their month’s thirty dollars in hand, off to lose it at cards
+at some _circolo_; swarthy _contadini_, the farmer “Rubes” of Italy,
+having disposed of their poultry and their wives’ straw plaiting, are
+here “doing the town”; groups of impoverished laborers from near-by
+estates, lamenting with despairing gestures the impending failure of
+the olive crop and charging it to ghosts and the evil eye; venders of
+coral and tortoise shell; resplendent Carabinieri in pairs, fanning
+themselves with their picturesque chapeaux; thrifty policemen pursuing
+street peddlers, with an eye to a per centum of the fines; heroic
+school-ma’ams, trying to forget that their miserable one hundred and
+fifty dollars per annum is not likely to save them from such distress
+as De Amicis tells of in his impressive “Romanzo d’ un Mestro”; that
+odd military _rara avis_, the Bersagliero, pruning his glossy feathers
+and looking quite equal to a trot to Posilipo and back; rioting
+students, still unreconciled to having been “ploughed” at the recent
+examinations, or having failed of the coveted _laurea_ degree when,
+frock-coated and nervous, they discussed their theses unsuccessfully
+before the jury of examiners; the pompous syndic of some commune;
+priests in black cassocks and fuzzy, broad-brimmed hats; some prefect
+returning from a many-coursed dinner, intent upon political _coups_
+when the Government’s candidates come up for election; and, most
+dejected and dangerous of all, the unemployed men of education, the
+_spostati_, who will hunt government jobs while there is any hope and
+then turn Socialists in Lombardy or Camorristi in Naples.
+
+All along the way the soda fountains are sputtering and the “American
+Bars” bustling. Bookstores fascinate here, as everywhere, and shining
+leather volumes cry out for attention in the names of D’Annunzio, De
+Amicis, Verga, and Fogazzaro. “Il Trionfo della Morta” lifts its slimy
+head on every counter, side by side with the breezy Neapolitan stories
+of Signora Serao. I always look curiously, but so far unsuccessfully,
+to find a single bookstore window that does not contain that national
+family table ornament, the “I Promessi Sposi” of Manzoni—the man for
+whom Verdi composed the immortal Requiem Mass.
+
+The Toledo tide runs northward for twenty blocks or so from where we
+entered it, swings around the marble statue of Dante in the poet’s
+piazza, and sets south again. At nine o’clock it begins to diverge
+into the Strada di Chiaja, where there is music and promenading until
+midnight.
+
+Detecting this hint of the hour, I hail a venerable, loose-jointed cab
+and bargain to be taken to my great, sepulchral, marble-floored room on
+the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. Now, cabs are cheap in Naples—after you
+have paid a penalty of extortion for the first few days’ experience;
+the real expense concerns the tailor as much as the cabman, in wear
+and tear to clothing, trying to keep on the seat as you bounce along
+over these volcanic-block pavements. This evening the cabman starts the
+usual trouble by demanding threefold the legal fare, and as we work it
+down to the tariff rate he insults me pleasantly and volubly, and I
+try to do as well by him. At length we arrive at a quasi-satisfactory
+basis; he shrugs contemptuous acceptance of my terms and I relax to the
+point of conceding that his ponies are only a little worse-groomed than
+the average and have, as far as I can see, all the mountainous brass
+fixtures prescribed by custom, along with the coral horn that will save
+me from the evil eye. So in I clamber. There is an infantry volley of
+whip-cracking and a burst of wild invective at the obstructing crowd
+and my head snaps back with sufficient force to keep me quiet to the
+journey’s end.
+
+On the pleasant little balcony of my room I dare not linger long
+to-night. Well I know the busy programme of the departure on the
+morrow. There will be a hurried stop for one last hasty look into the
+Museo, with my luggage on the waiting cab outside; then, at my urgent
+“Fa presto,” some reckless Jehu will rattle me over the stones to the
+station; I will go down into my pocket again, in the old familiar way,
+for seventy centesimi and an additional _pourboire_ to the cabby; and
+twenty more for the spry old porter who will shoulder my grips into
+the smoker; and the conductor will blow a horn, and the station bell
+will ring, and the engineer will blow a whistle,—in their rare Italian
+manner,—and the wheels will begin to squeak and groan, and I shall be
+off for Rome.
+
+And that is why a cigar lacks its usual solace on my balcony to-night;
+the last I am to smoke in Good Night to this fascinating city. The
+subdued hum of cheery, happy revelry, mingled with music and song,
+drifts up from the bright squares and animated streets. The minutes
+multiply as I dwell over the varying phases of old Vesuvius, or gaze
+long and lingeringly over the star-lit Bay and all the romantic
+playground of these grown-up children. One cannot bring himself to
+say a definite farewell to this beautiful Region of Revisitors. With
+a yearning hope of returning some other day, he moderates it to a
+heartfelt Good Night and a tentative “till we meet again”:—
+
+ “A rivederci, Napoli! Benedicite e buon riposo!”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+HEIDELBERG
+
+9 P.M. TO 10 P.M.
+
+    There stands an ancient castle
+    On yonder mountain height,
+    Where, fenced with door and portal,
+    Once tarried steed and knight.
+
+    But gone are door and portal,
+    And all is hushed and still;
+    O’er ruined wall and rafter
+    I clamber as I will.
+GOETHE’S “Castle on the Mountain.”
+
+When the sun has gone down behind the Blue Alsatian Mountains and the
+last stain of color has faded from the skies of the Rhenish plain, when
+clock tower has answered clock tower and evening bell responded to
+evening bell from the mountain streams and mill wheels of the Odenwald
+to the busy squares of Mannheim, then the quiet and gentle valley of
+the Neckar takes on a peculiar peace and glory that is exquisite and
+marvelous, and Heidelberg and its lordly ruins seem set in a veritable
+fairy-ring of delicate charm and beauty. So tranquil and lovely is
+this region in the early evening that even the latest comer soon feels
+a comforting sense of having turned aside from out of the rush and
+fever of life into a singularly placid and protected corner of earth,
+a hushed and happy Vale of Tempe. This sense of rest and seclusion is
+one of Heidelberg’s strongest appeals—and her appeals, though few, are
+all emphatic. For there are no “sights” here, the castle excepted. The
+quaint old town is friendly and genial, though not more so than many
+others of this comfortable German father-land; nor is the serene Neckar
+so exceptional as to occasion pilgrimage.
+
+Heidelberg’s appeals are to the mind, the heart, and the senses: the
+mind is inspired by her impressive achievements in learning; the heart
+is touched by her tragic history; and the senses are spellbound by the
+exceptional charm of her natural beauty. She is never so fair as in the
+early evening. With the soft fall of night each blemish fades away, and
+what remains to see and feel is altogether rare and lovely.
+
+[Illustration: HEIDELBERG, FROM THE CASTLE TERRACE]
+
+When the valley clocks are booming nine with muffled strokes it is
+delightful to be up in the castle’s ruins, lounging on the Great
+Balcony of the crumbling Friedrich Palace, with a broad coping for a
+seat and the rustling ivy of the hollow walls for a pillow. Behind
+and about one is the vast, ruddy wreckage of the knightly halls and
+towers of this far-famed “Alhambra of Germany,” and fluttering plains
+of tree-tops are billowing upward on every hand to the dark heights of
+the Königsstuhl. On the opposite side of the valley, across the river,
+dense forests of oak and chestnut glitter in the moonlight, sweeping
+aloft to the summit of the storied Saints’ Mountain. Just below our
+balcony the clustered spires and steep roofs of the huddled old town
+house their fifty thousand happy people between the wooded hillsides
+and the shimmering Neckar that bands the middle distance, on its
+placid Rhine journey, like a silver ribbon on a velvet cloak. In its
+bright waters hills and trees are luminously mirrored, along with the
+inky, motionless shadows of its bridges and the sober reflections of
+shuttered house-fronts along its verge.
+
+In the dewy coolness and still of evening the guardian oaks breathe a
+recurrent lullaby—now softly agitated, now as hushed and ghostly and
+motionless as the hills in which they are rooted; and one understands
+how such a soothing environment could have softened even the impetuous,
+fiery, war-loving young Körner to indite so gentle a benediction as his
+beautiful “Good Night”:—
+
+          “Good night!
+    To each weary, toilworn wight,
+    Now the day so sweetly closes,
+    Every aching brow reposes
+    Peacefully till morning light.
+          Good night.
+
+          “Home to rest!
+    Close the eye and calm the breast;
+    Stillness through the streets is stealing,
+    And the watchman’s horn is pealing,
+    And the Night calls softly ‘Haste!
+          Home to rest!’”
+
+Up in the castle ruins one is seldom alone before midnight, and not
+even then if the melancholy spectre of Rupert’s Tower is disposed
+to walk abroad. In the early evening the good people of Heidelberg,
+kindliest and most contented of Germans, stroll with vast delight under
+the lindens of the castle gardens, and groups of careless students
+loiter merrily along the terraces, adding bright touches of color with
+their peaked caps and broad corps ribbons. Bits of song and bursts of
+laughter give a homely suggestion of habitation to these staring walls;
+one could fancy the dead-and-gone old nobles at wassail again, with
+minstrels in the banquet hall, and Perkeo, the jester, whispering jokes
+in the ear of the Count Palatine.
+
+“Under the tree-tops,” sang Goethe, “is quiet now.” There is a low
+sad sound of night breeze in the ivy; a swallow darts through a
+paneless window; a bat zig-zags among the echoing arches of a tower.
+Like phantom sentinels the stone statues of the old electors stand
+white and impressive in niches on the palace fronts. Fragrance of
+flowers drifts in from the castle gardens and the delicate plash of
+falling water comes from a terrace fountain. The lamps of the city
+rim the river below, and villas beyond the farther bank are marked
+by tiny dots of lights in the purple of the groves behind Neuenheim.
+Across the Neckar-cut gulf of shadow the chestnut-crowned summit of
+the Heiligenberg stares down solemnly at us, and not all the songs of
+its blithest nightingales can banish thoughts of its ancient Roman
+sacrifices nor divert the credulous from vigils over the blue grave
+lights around the Benedictine cloister where they buried the sainted
+Abbot of Hirschau. Up through the dark billows of this tree-top ocean
+rises a strain of Wagner’s music from some cheery, hidden woodland
+inn—and under the magic spell of the night one could fancy the
+golden-haired Siegfried approaching on a new Rhine Journey, following
+the winding Neckar up the broad Rhenish plain; the Tarnhelm is at his
+belt, the World-Warder Ring on his finger, and the moonlight flashes
+dreadfully from the glittering blade of “Nothung” as the hero’s horn
+winds note of arrival under the walls of our stout castle!
+
+It is especially at such an hour as this that one realizes how easy
+it is for the man who thoroughly knows Heidelberg to acknowledge a
+delightful and lifelong bondage. A large number of the most eminent
+literati of the world have agreed in this. Goethe ascribed to her
+“ideal beauty.” Macaulay pronounced her environment “one of the fairest
+regions of Europe.” The father of German poetry, Martin Opitz, loved
+her dearly in his student days here, three centuries ago, and wrote
+affectionately of her all the rest of his life. The prolific Tieck
+found time between novels to lament the destruction of a few of her
+oaks. Alois Schreiber turned from his poetry and history to grieve
+over the loss of a lime-tree. Von Scheffel praised her in prose and
+verse and hailed her in seven songs of his “Gaudeamus.” La Fontaine
+could not conceive of more ideal surroundings in which to reunite his
+“Clara du Plessis” and her devoted “Clairant.” G. P. R. James, in his
+favorite romance “Heidelberg,” wrought prodigies of sentimentality here
+with the heroic “Algernon Grey” and the emotional “Agnes.” Matthisson
+immortalized himself by his “Elegie” in these ruins. All who have read
+Alexandre Dumas’s dramatic “Crimes Célèbres” will recall the young
+fanatic, Karl Ludwig Sand, and his assassination of the poet, Kotzebue,
+in our neighboring city of Mannheim, but they may not have heard of
+how Kotzebue once said: “If an unhappy individual were to ask me what
+spot to live in to get rid of the cares and sorrows which pursue him,
+I should say Heidelberg; and a happy one asks me what spot he would
+choose to adorn with fresh wreaths the joys of his life, I should still
+say Heidelberg.”
+
+Goethe loved the Neckar, and scarcely less its famous old bridge. In
+an interpretative mood he once observed, “The bridge shows itself
+in such beauty as is perhaps not to be equaled by any other in the
+world.” And, indeed, it is an easy thing to divide enthusiasm between
+bridge and river. Nothing is jollier than loafing against the broad
+balustrades of this solid old veteran, as the students love to do, and
+lazily take note of the river’s tinted reflections, the ripple and eddy
+about the piers, the mirroring of the arches in perfect reverse, and
+watch the deep green shadows of the hills creep out and steal across.
+Great rafts come downstream laden with the output of the Odenwald and
+Black Forest, and swift steamers hurry under the massive arches bound
+upstream for the mountain towns or downward to Mannheim. Ferries ply
+beside it, fishermen drift beneath it, and throngs of townspeople
+and countrymen stroll along it, with now and then a be-petticoated
+peasant girl from the Odenwald whose fair hair is hidden under a huge
+black coif. How redolent it is of Rhenish life! One lingers beside
+the great statue of its builder, the old Elector, and gazes with
+unwearying satisfaction on the strange mediæval gateway, loopholed and
+portcullised, and wonders where two other such queer round towers can
+be found with such odd bell-shaped capitals and such slender little
+spires. Terrible and tragic experiences have befallen this sturdy old
+hero, and its antique towers are pitted from the riddling of French
+and Swedish and German bullets. Fire has swept it, cannon shaken it,
+floods grappled with it, and blood drenched it from shore to shore.
+Wan processions of famine-stricken people have dragged themselves
+across its paving-stones, and its gateways have reëchoed with groans
+and prayers and curses. To-night we see it as defiant as ever,
+battle-scarred and unshaken, with “head bloody but unbowed,” striding
+its river with broad and shapely arches—as real a part of Heidelberg
+as the very hills above it.
+
+One looks down from the castle on the twinkling lights of the cramped
+old town, and notes how it has ambitiously spread its suburbs even
+beyond the opposite bank and that its villa-lamps sprinkle their way
+in the distance toward that little hamlet with the great mouthful of
+a name,—Handschuhsheim,—in the hills. It is there, could we see it,
+that the tumbledown hut stands that sheltered Luther when he escaped
+from the “Tile-Devils” of Worms; at a sight of it one wonders if he
+did not exclaim here as he did at the Diet: “Here I take my stand. I
+can do no otherwise. _God help me!_” In Heidelberg itself, the shops
+of that one long street, Hauptstrasse, send up a wavering, crooked
+path of softened light, but the more elegant _Anlage_ is discreetly
+reserved with all its hotels and imposing homes. One distinguishes
+little at this hour of the peaked tile roofs and faded shutters of the
+venerable town—the little awninged shops, sombre cafés, _Stuben_, and
+restaurants; or the excited appearance of an occasional side street
+that starts with all enthusiasm at the river, loses heart in a block or
+two, and comes suddenly to a discouraged end in a tangle of trees and
+forest paths. We only know that Emperor William I canters his bronze
+steed with its capacious girth along the middle of Ludwigs-Platz right
+up to the university building where the celebrated professors have
+their “readings” before their frisky young “Meine Herren”; and that
+the market-place is probably as shabby and gloomy as usual, and the
+Kornmarkt subsided again to its customary listlessness since the last
+of the evening crowds have taken the mountain railroads there for cool
+trips to the Königsstuhl or the Molkenkur or for a trout dinner at the
+distant Wolfsbrunnen.
+
+Out of this cramped nest of roofs the shadowy Gothic tower of St.
+Peter’s Church rises boldly, challenging beholders to forget—if
+they can—how Jerome of Prague once nailed his theses on its doors
+and defended them before excited multitudes; calling, besides, on
+the distant and indifferent to sometimes have a thought of the
+famous university scholars who lie under the weeping-willows of
+its churchyard. A neighboring bidder for consideration, the famous
+Heilig-Geistkirche, thrusts a lofty spire skyward above the dark
+tree-tops until its weather vane is almost on a level with our feet.
+There is little need for this ecclesiastic to feel any apprehension
+on the score of being forgotten, so renowned has it been for half
+a thousand years as once the foremost cathedral of the Palatinate,
+celebrated for richness of endowment, extent of revenues, the beauty of
+its art treasures, and the learning of its prebendaries. As it appeals
+to us to-night it is as one fallen far from its former high estate,
+and yet the very eagles that soar over Heidelberg must have enough
+knowledge of religious controversy to recall its past amusing dilemmas
+of divided orthodoxy. The stranger in the castle ruins will smile
+as he thinks of what he has read of the days when both Protestants
+and Catholics worshiped there at one and the same time, through the
+effective device of a partition wall thrown up to separate choir from
+nave. The elaborate Catholic ceremonials of the altar necessitated
+the reservation of the choir for them, while the Protestants got
+along very nicely with a pulpit built in the end of the nave. What
+unusual entertainment might have been contrived by neutrals to the
+controversy had a brick or two been removed from the partition wall
+and an ear applied alternately to either service! On one side, _Ave
+Marias_ and _Pater Nosters_—on the other, hymns of the Lutherans;
+here, the wailing _Confiteor_ and the penitential breast-beating of
+_mea culpa_—there, grim scorn of all ritual and ceremony; in the
+choir, the intoning of versicle and response, reiterations of “_Dominus
+Vobiscum_” and “_Et cum Spiritu tuo_,” the solemn _Tantum Ergo_, the
+passionate _Agnus Dei_, and the triple sound of the acolyte’s bell as
+the Host is elevated above the kneeling, praying throngs—in the nave,
+a rapt absorption in the new significance of old truths, and lengthy
+discourses by stern and ascetic expounders; for one congregation,
+a glittering altar, sacred images, flaming candles, and a jeweled
+monstrance—stiff pews and a painted pulpit, for the other; for the
+Catholics, flocks of priests and choir boys, deacons and subdeacons,
+sumptuously vested in alb and stole and gorgeous chasuble—for the
+Protestants, one solemn man in black. Neutrals at the dividing wall
+could have rendered both congregations a service by loosening a
+brick or two and letting a little incense and beauty pass to the
+Dissenters’ side, and some word of wisdom concerning a release from
+dogma get through to the Catholics. Had America’s new policy of church
+unity existed then, it would have advocated doing away with the wall
+altogether and finding some compromise for approaching a common God
+in a common way. Time, the great umpire, has settled the contest as a
+draw; for the partition wall has come out and the rival camps with it:
+the present occupants are “Old Catholics”—a sect with which either
+side has little sympathy and less patience.
+
+The evening lounger in the old castle will doubtless have more than one
+thought of the famous seat of learning that has, for five and a quarter
+centuries, invested the name of Heidelberg with so much lustre and
+glory. He will, of course, have heard it called the “cradle of Germanic
+science,” and will have been told that of all Germanic universities
+only those at Prague and Vienna are older than this. He can form some
+conclusion as to its rich contributions to human knowledge by merely
+recalling the names of its famous scholars,—Reuchlin, Melanchthon,
+Ursinus, Voss, Helmholtz, Bunsen, Kuno Fischer, and the rest,—and
+will gauge its present standing by the acknowledged eminence of
+its faculties in medicine, law, and philosophy. One thinks of its
+long eras of philosophic speculation, always deeply earnest if not
+invariably profitable, and applauds the force of Longfellow’s simile
+in “Hyperion” when he compared them to roads in our Western forests
+that are broad and pleasant at first, but eventually dwindle to a
+squirrel-track and run up a tree. If the loiterer be a Presbyterian,
+he will want to acknowledge indebtedness to old Ursinus for that
+celebrated “Heidelberg Catechism” of three hundred and fifty years
+ago that supplied the Westminster Assembly with a model for the
+“Shorter Catechism” in use to-day. That the university has survived the
+destructive rigors of so many fierce wars is perhaps sufficient proof
+of its vitality and the estimate men have set on its usefulness. Tilly
+carried off its library and presented it to the Pope, when he conquered
+Heidelberg in the Thirty Years’ War, but although only a small portion
+of it has ever been returned it has to-day a half-million volumes
+and documents, among which are original writings of Martin Luther
+and manuscripts of the Minnesingers. The pleasant summer semester
+attracts students here,—being allowed, under the “Freiheit” system, to
+exchange _alma maters_,—and then one may count up perhaps two thousand
+scholastic transients in Heidelberg. To many visitors the equipment
+will appear meagre, for, excepting the main building in Ludwigs-Platz,
+the library building, medical institution, and botanical gardens,
+there is little in sight to remind one of its existence. In witness of
+which there is the popular joke about a new arrival who inquired of a
+passer-by where the university might be: “Don’t know,” was the reply:
+“I’m a student myself.”
+
+The presence of the jovial student, however, is too much in evidence at
+this time of the evening, through distant shouts and songs, to leave
+any one in doubt about the university being somewhere hereabouts.
+But when are they _not_ in evidence? At any hour of the day and
+night you come across them in the cafés, on the streets, loafing on
+the bridge or up in the castle, or returning or departing on their
+favorite recreation of walking-trips through the hills. Their smart
+peaked caps and broad corps ribbons are scenic features of the
+neighborhood. You wonder when they study, and how much time they ever
+spend in the private rooms they call their _Wohnungen_. In spite of
+the appearance of extreme _hauteur_ conveyed by their invariable and
+ceremonious punctilio these ruddy-faced boys are highly sociable,
+and take a prodigious delight in smoking, drinking, and singing
+together. A _Kaffeeconcert_ is entirely to their liking, and even more
+a jolly _Kegelbahn_ supper in some forest restaurant at the end of a
+long tramp. Most of all, which is amazing, they relish their stupid
+_Kneipen_ where every friendly draft of their weak beer is preceded
+by a challenge to drink, and where the only redeeming feature is the
+fine singing. Still, at _Commerces_, one hears the time-honored Fox
+Chorus, “What comes there from the hill.” Even the pet vice of dueling
+might be mildly defended on the ground that German students have no
+such athletic contests as their brothers of America and England and
+that each looks to the sword, in consequence, as an arbiter of courage
+and prowess—from the _Füchse_ (who are freshmen) to the _Bürschen_
+(who are seniors). Granted that the occasional sabre duel is really
+dangerous, still injuries are trifling in the ordinary encounters
+_Auf der Mensur_, fought with the thin, basket-hilted Schläger, and
+preferably on the _Paukboden_ of the famous Hirschgasse tavern up the
+little valley across the river. Blood apart, it is rather amusing
+than otherwise to watch the contestants in their pads and goggles,
+the seconds straddling between them with drawn words, and the callous
+umpire keeping merry count of the wounds. Few topers and bullies here,
+but vigorous, wholesome youth.
+
+The outlook from the Grand Balcony is upon a sea of foliage so vast
+as completely to surround castle, gardens, and terraces and convert
+them into just such an enchanted island as springs so naturally out
+of the pages of the “Arabian Nights.” Evidences of sorcery and magic
+multiply as we make the rounds of our fortress, for voices and music
+come up out of the tremulous green depths, and companion isles emerge
+in the moonlit distance, but lifted far above us and set on prodigious
+wave-shoulders of steadily increasing height. The loftiest of these
+rocks we know to be famous Königsstuhl, a name they have vainly been
+trying to change to Kaisersstuhl since the visit of Emperor Francis
+of Austria, a hundred years ago, and Emperor Alexander of Russia.
+From this eyrie perch one looks abroad by day on a very considerable
+portion of the wide, wide world, and the distance covered is only
+limited by the imagination of the observer. Then the Neckar valley is
+at one’s feet, and a little farther off is the Rhine, and away yonder
+are the Haardt Mountains and the sombre edges of the Black Forest. The
+faint blur on the southwestern horizon is said to be Speyer, where the
+followers of the Reformation were first called “Protestants,” and the
+lofty pinnacle of the cathedral, rising above the tombs of its imperial
+dead, quickens thoughts of that “mellifluous doctor” whose writings
+were “a river of Paradise,” the crusade preacher, St. Bernard, to whom
+the Madonna is credited with having revealed herself in that very
+church. Our mortal eyes may confirm the identity of this much from the
+Königsstuhl’s observation tower, but we can only envy the miraculous
+vision of those who see the spire of the Strassburg Cathedral, sixty
+miles away. Doubtless they could distinguish the identical tree of the
+famous Odenwald rhyme:—
+
+    “There stands a tree in the Odenwald,
+      With many a bough so green,
+    ’Neath which my own true love and I
+      A thousand joys have seen.”
+
+Another of the companion isles of this moonlit, tree-top ocean is
+the popular Molkenkur, a modern “whey-cure,” that flourishes on the
+princely site of the earliest stronghold of this whole region. To
+those who are strolling its broad terrace and reflecting, perhaps,
+upon the tragic history of the place, seven centuries roll back and
+Barbarossa’s brother, the savage Conrad of Hohenstaufen, climbs the
+forest trail with archers and spearmen, returning to his mountain
+retreat from a robber raid along the Rhine. And perhaps the visitor
+fancies he even hears the roar of that historic explosion that rained
+the wreckage of old Conrad’s fortress on town and river, or sees the
+blinding lightning stroke that crumbled this dread stronghold into a
+stalking-ground for the shuddering phantoms of winter fireside legends.
+
+Reflections that penetrate still farther back into the gloaming of
+local tradition will precede Conrad’s fortress with the temple of
+the enchantress Jetta; and could we distinguish in the distance the
+rock where the cozy inn of the Wolfsbrunnen perches and serves its
+rare dinners of mountain trout, we should see the very spot where the
+wolf slew Jetta in judgment of the Goddess Hertha, who was properly
+indignant that her priestess should have fallen in love with a mortal.
+
+The nearer waters of the billowy forest-sea that ripples around the
+ruined castle walls contain in their dark, cool depths a picturesque
+tangle of woodland paths and romantic walks, thickets of fragrant
+flowers, a shattered arch half cloaked with ivy, and many a pleasant
+wayside café opened to the sky and gay with its little German band.
+For those who emerge from the shadows and come up like Undines into
+the moonlight that streams in a silver mist on terrace and garden, as
+fair a picture reveals itself as can be seen in any part of our world.
+Here are lakes and grottoes and fountains and statues, all flecked with
+the heavy shadows of lindens and beeches. Here are crumbling towers
+and vine-mantled turrets and shattered, moss-grown arch and cornice.
+Even lovelier to-day are these gardens and scarcely less celebrated
+than three hundred years ago when old Solomon de Caus, architect and
+engineer of the Counts Palatine and first prophet of the power of
+steam, “leveled the mountain-tops and filled up the valleys” (as he
+has recorded in a Latin inscription in one of the older grottoes),
+and built these “plantations” and made them the haunts of singing
+birds, and filled them with orange-trees and rare exotic plants, and
+ornamented them with statues and with fountains that made music as they
+played. The ruined castle is embraced and enfolded in these beautiful
+gardens as an ailing child by its mother’s arms. The ravages of fire
+and war have scarred and wrecked it beyond man’s redemption, but the
+sturdy walls still oppose their twenty-foot masonry to the attacks of
+Time as stubbornly as did the great Wrent Tower when it defied the
+powder blasts of the detested Count Mélac and his devastating Frenchmen.
+
+As the hour of ten draws near, we return through the vaulted passage
+from the Great Balcony and enter the grass-grown central courtyard.
+Outside the façades were grim and bleak and built to meet an enemy’s
+blows, but toward the courtyard the castle turned faces of ornament
+and beauty. One feels at once the force of the saying that this is not
+the ruin of a castle, but of an epoch. It slowly flowered through the
+five hundred years that Heidelberg was the capital of the Palatinate,
+and all the development of those intervening times is expressed in its
+varying architecture. Pomp and circumstance are written big across
+it, for its masters and builders were counts and princes, kings and
+emperors. One feels the love and pride they took in these deserted
+palaces, now masterless. In the pale moonlight whole rows of effigies
+of the illustrious dead stand boldly forth in niches of the hollow,
+staring walls, and medallion heads peer curiously out of pediment
+recesses, and history and allegory find expression in lifelike statue
+and carven bust. Delicate arabesques and fanciful conceits wreathe
+themselves in stones of portal and cornice, and the armorial chequers
+of Bavaria and the Lion of the Palatinate oppose the lordly Eagle of
+the Empire. Time has modulated the discordant keys of architecture of
+divergent periods into a common and mellow harmony, so that the first
+rude stones laid by old Rudolph seem a consistent part of an assemblage
+that includes that finest example of Renaissance architecture in all
+Germany—Otto-Heinrich’s wonderful ruddy palace set with its yellow
+statues. One thinks of Prague and the battle of the White Hill as he
+sees the ill-starred Frederick’s massive contribution, and wonders
+why this beautiful realm could not have enticed him from playing that
+tragic rôle of “Winter King.” Frederick’s palace looms impressively by
+night; in its varied architecture and majestic effigies of the House
+of Wittelsbach one feels the propriety of having here a comprehensive
+levy upon the building-knowledge of all previous time as an adequate
+and appropriate expression of the catholic culture of the lords of the
+Palatinate.
+
+And, indeed, one reflects, there was need for both strength and beauty
+to a fortress that was to play so momentous a rôle in the fierce
+dissensions of its time. In that dungeon a pope once lay a prisoner; in
+this chamber Huss found refuge; in yonder chapel Luther has preached,
+and all the foremost spiritual lords of the hour. This courtyard has
+echoed with shouts for the Emperor Sigismund when he tarried here _en
+route_ to play that perfidious part at the Council of Constance, and
+has rocked with wild applause as “Wicked Fritz,” returning in triumph
+from the battlefield of Seckenheim, marched in his captive princes.
+These staring walls have blazed with royal fêtes—in the hush and
+desolation of to-night one feels a deep sadness in contrasting the
+ominous silence that pervades them now with the splendor and uproar
+that vitalized them when a princess was wedded in this crumbling
+chapel; when Emperor Maximilian came up from his coronation at
+Frankfort; when the foremost figure of his era, Emperor Charles V, and
+his sallow little son who was later Phillip II, feasted and reveled
+here for days at a time.
+
+We look up at the Gothic balconies, and it seems as though we could
+almost see some early lord of this stronghold peering down through
+painted windows at the athletic sports of his hardy sons; and a certain
+unreality takes phantom form and substance, and the sentinel figures
+descend solemnly from their niches as a train of valorous knights
+and pages issues from Otto-Heinrich’s broad portal with music and
+laughter; there is the scrape and tread of mailed feet and the shouts
+of a gallant company as fair-haired women in shimmering silks and
+high-peaked headdresses award prizes of the tourney to kneeling men
+in glittering armor; and the trumpets sound and the torches flare and
+the noble retinue sweeps into the great banquet hall, while the “merry
+councilor” who brings up the rear makes us a profound and mocking
+bow as the door is closed—and we are alone with the statues in the
+moonlight.
+
+The empty, silent courtyard is spectral and sad; it is an hour for
+reverie, for apprehension. The pale silver of the moon whitens into
+phantom-life two sides and a corner; the rest is a deep, hushed shadow.
+A cushion of ivy stirs in the faint night air; a bat flashes over a
+shattered cornice; a stone detaches itself exhaustedly and falls with a
+tinkle of sand, waking a protest of little echoes.
+
+One steals away silently, resigning ward of all this senile decay to
+faithful Perkeo, who, in wooden effigy, still companions his huge empty
+tuns in the darkness of the cellars—the little, red-haired, faithful
+jester who alone remains constant to his master, of all the army of
+attendants that thronged these palaces for half a thousand years.
+
+We pass the old stone-canopied well whose columns once were
+Charlemagne’s, pass the ponderous clock tower and the moat bridge, and
+enter the fragrant gardens as the valley bells sound ten and the purple
+mists are rising from the Neckar.
+
+It is impossible to escape a feeling of profound melancholy. Where now
+are the powerful princes whose rusted swords may not strike back were I
+to raise a hand of destruction against the halls they reared and loved
+and guarded with such might? “The fate of every man,” said the Koran,
+“have We bound about his neck.”
+
+It is depressing to think that such glory, power, and beauty as once
+were here should have flourished so wonderfully and come to so little.
+Was all this magnificence created merely for destruction? Could nothing
+less suffice grim Time to build him an eyrie for bats and swallows?
+Was Von Matthisson right in the judgment he expressed in the sad and
+sympathetic “Elegie” he penned in these ruins, and must we conclude
+with him that temporal glory is but ashes and that the darkness of
+the grave adorns impartially the proud brow of the world ruler and the
+trembling head that shakes above the pilgrim’s staff?
+
+    “Hoheit, Ehre, Macht und Ruhm sind eitel!
+    Eines weltgebieters stolze Scheitel
+    Und ein zitternd Haupt am Pilgerstab
+    Deckt mit einer Dunkelheit das Grab!”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+INTERLAKEN
+
+10 P.M. TO 11 P.M.
+
+
+THE top of the evening at brisk and bracing Interlaken is certainly ten
+o’clock. Vigorous, vitalizing air breathes down on the lush meadows
+from towering Alpine snowfields, and languor and ennui fall away from
+her dispirited summer idlers and a refreshing life interest reasserts
+itself. It is then one may see the deep, flowered lawns that front the
+great hotels of the broad Höheweg pleasantly thronged with animated
+guests, modishly and immaculately groomed; and each little street and
+quiet lane has its quota of vivacious strollers who prefer the keen
+night air and the inspiring mountain-prospect to the conventional
+attractions of the brilliant Kursaal or the round of mild social
+diversions that is in progress in the hotel apartments. Then, too,
+there is a certain subdued note of expectancy in the air, for this is
+the little village’s fête hour; and almost as the valley clocks are
+striking the hour the celebration is heralded with a burst of rockets
+from the open field of the Höhenmatte, in the centre of the town, and
+there is a general rush of chattering guests to see the display and to
+exhibit prodigious approval. All are aware of the fact that this is
+merely an expression, in terms of Swiss thrift, of the appreciation
+the seventy-five hundred villagers feel for the lucrative presence of
+thousands of guests, and yet it admirably serves as a mid-break in the
+evening’s diversions. There is little enough to the celebration, to be
+sure, excepting the exaggerated importance such an event always assumes
+to isolated summer people, but you would think it was a pyrotechnic
+marvel, to judge by the enthusiasm.
+
+To see Interlaken then is to behold her at her gayest. Bridge-parties
+forsake their cards, late diners their ices, and billiardists their
+cues. Each little balcony on the hotel fronts is promptly crowded,
+orchestras strike up lively Strauss waltzes, troops of delighted guests
+hurry across the Höheweg and pour into the meadow, until one might
+fairly conclude there was a carnival on, from the overflow of laughter
+and merrymaking. It is always a great moment at the Kursaal. There the
+excitement seekers have been wandering from parlors to lounging-rooms
+and ending up in the cheery gaming-hall, where a toy train on a long
+green table darts around a little track, laden with the francs and
+merry hopes of modest challengers of fortune, and comes to an exciting
+and leisurely stop before some station with the name of a European
+capital. Just then, like as not, as the _croupier_ begins raking in
+the scattered piles of silver and the losers are being gleefully
+accosted by their friends, somebody suddenly shouts “Fireworks!” and
+forthwith all run hurrahing into the gardens and cry out like summer
+children in vast delight over the rockets that go hurtling skyward
+from the Höhenmatte. It is all quite of the nature of a very elegant
+international fête to which the Old World and the New have accredited
+their most _recherché_ representatives.
+
+There is seldom a lack of keen activity at Interlaken, but at this
+hour it is most abounding; nor will the new arrival fail to note the
+contrast between the sharp alertness of this company and the lethargic
+listlessness that depresses, for instance, the bored idlers who bask
+in the dusty olive gardens of the Riviera. In the intermittent glow
+of the fireworks, cottages and distant hotels spring out of the
+surrounding darkness. The top of a hillside sanatorium appears of
+a sudden white against the dark pines, the packsaddle roof of the
+church tower discovers itself, a turret shows with the red field and
+white Greek cross of the Swiss flag lazily unfolding above it, and
+one looks anxiously for just one glimpse of the old cloister’s round
+towers and cone-shaped roofs that reminded Longfellow of “tall tapers
+with extinguishers.” Music drifts down from remote cafés and pavilions
+nestling in wooded nooks. The air is heady and buoyant with the scent
+of pine and fir. Life seems at high tide; and then just as suddenly it
+is all over, and the gay company resumes its interrupted activities
+with infinite laughter and handclapping.
+
+There is a positive spell to all this Alpine comedy. No new arrival
+will feel inclined to return at once to hotel conventionalities, with
+a soft purple mist shrouding the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and the distant
+Jungfrau lying pallid and wan in the moonlight. He will gaze about him
+in wonder at the snow-crowned peaks that hem in the little Bödeli plain
+where Interlaken snuggles, and will feel how wonderful it is that the
+boisterous Lütschine and its fellow torrents could ever have filled in
+this alluvial barrier between the deep lakes that fought them inch by
+inch. He will think of the enchanted regions of the Bernese Oberland
+that lie just before him, and of the contrasting beauty of the inland
+seas that stretch away on either hand: Lake Brienz, mysterious and
+austere, scowling at its precipitous mountain shores, roaring welcomes
+to its thundering waterfalls, and begrudging standing-room for the
+tiniest of hamlets; Lake Thun, “the Riviera of Switzerland,” with
+lovely vistas of green meadows, châteaux-dotted hillsides and distant
+snowy summits, all breathing such mildness and serenity as befitted
+the former abode of the holy hermit of St. Beatenberg. And doubtless
+he will seek out some tree-embowered path that winds along the Aare,
+and there indulge in contemplative thought of this glittering blue link
+between the lakes. Nor could he do better, for this arrogant stream is
+an illustrious instance of a reformed rake. Of evil repute for riotous
+cascade and brawling torrent all the way up to its home by the Grimsel
+Pass, it responds to the touch of civilization at Interlaken and
+meekly accepts the bondage of steam for the remainder of its career.
+What a gratifying example of reform it presents as it proceeds demurely
+along from this scene of moral crisis, laving thankful little towns,
+reporting conscientiously to the proper authorities at Bern, and, after
+an exhibition review-sweep around the capital, flowing sweetly on to
+Waldshut and modestly laying down its burden on the broad bosom of the
+Rhine. The stranger will perceive that virtue has its rewards, with
+rivers as with humans, when he takes note of the extravagant petting
+and eulogy that has followed the repentance of the Aare at Interlaken,
+its adornment with promenades, gardens, and artistic bridges, and the
+choice of much excellent society, particularly at night, on the part of
+ruminating savants and romantic lovers of all ages.
+
+Strolling along the river paths carpeted with sweet-scented pine
+needles, the delighted new arrival has only to lift his eyes to
+discover how picturesquely the little city lies in its bed of lush
+and fertile meadows. It will seem to him like a great stage set for a
+mammoth spectacle. For background there is the black and flinty Harder,
+set with the grim rock face of the scowling Hardermannli, rugged in
+boulders and sheer cliffs and hiding its base in treacherous, grassy
+slopes; the Aare skirts it fearfully, and the pretty little cottages
+of Unterseen shrink close to Lake Thun on its farther side. Prostrate
+Interlaken lies supine before it, gazing appealingly through its
+innumerable windows across the open Höhenmatte, over the beeches and
+firs of the protruding shoulder of the Rugen, and on up the dodging,
+narrow Lütschine Valley to the remote and sympathetic Jungfrau. The
+scene is ready for the curtain when you have dotted the mountain slopes
+with châlets.
+
+Or perhaps, if the stranger is fanciful, he will conceive the
+Alpine ravens thinking it some enormous eagle swooping toward the
+Lauterbrunnen Valley, with clustered houses for an attenuated body and
+two lakes for powerful blue wings beating out and back. Or, again, he
+may be reminded by this group of huge hotels of some fleet of old-time
+ships-of-the-line that started down the valley to bombard the Jungfrau.
+Early in the action formation was lost and the great hulks drifted
+about in hopeless confusion. Several, apparently, went promptly aground
+on the banks of the Aare right under the precipices of the Harder; all
+of the big ones foundered in a row along the Höheweg; a number became
+desperately entangled in the square before the Spielmatten Island;
+some trailed southward in what we call Jungfraustrasse, and others
+in Alpenstrasse; here and there one lies at anchor along the farther
+meadows, waiting for signals from the flagship on the Höheweg; and at
+least one, in the guise of an ugly white church, was caught in some
+violent cross-current and tossed up high and dry on the brow of the
+fir-smothered Gsteig.
+
+The evening guest who does not fancy reveries along a mountain stream,
+nor yet the quiet pacing of the neat lanes that are so characteristic
+of this immaculate republic of “spotless towns,” whose very flag
+appropriately suggests the Red Cross Society’s familiar emblem of
+sanitation, will find it amusing to loiter among the little shops
+of the village and see the curious wooden trifles of Brienz, the
+delicately tinted majolica ware of Thun, exquisite ivory carvings, and
+rare _bijouterie_ of filigree silver wrought with infinite patience and
+skill. Tiring of these, he may ramble under the fine old walnut-trees
+of the Höheweg and congratulate himself that he is not under the
+horse-chestnuts of Lucerne to look out on inferior mountain prospects
+and breathe a less intoxicating air.
+
+The most approved form of evening entertainment is a round of calls
+among friends scattered over the broad lawns of the hotels, when
+one may divert himself with summer orchestras or itinerant bands of
+Italian singers in crimson sashes, or revel in a rare profusion of
+beautiful flowers; and, from time to time, look gladly up at a crisp
+sky splendid with great luminous stars whose tremulous ardor, in Walter
+Pater’s famous phrase, “burns like a gem.” It is a capital place to
+gather impressions of what life at Interlaken means and what goes
+forward each day among its votaries. It is perfectly plain that this
+must be a great place; everybody is so bubblingly cheerful and so
+devoutly grateful for being just here and no possible spot else. You
+will hear them insisting that Interlaken, being halfway between, is
+an admirable combination of the complacent “prettiness” of Geneva and
+the austere solemnity of the vaunted Engadine Valley. Or there will
+be fragments of conversation reaching you about tennis matches on the
+Höhenmatte, lake bathing in Brienz, motor-bus runs from the golf links
+of Bönigen, where the residents plant a fruit tree whenever a baby is
+born, or of desperate scrambles up the zigzag trails of the Harder
+beloved of Weber, Mendelssohn, and Wagner, with rapturous accounts
+of the inspiring view from the _Kulm_. Some, you will gather, have
+passed the day uneventfully among the park walks of the Rugen, gazing
+down on Lake Brienz from the Trinkhalle Café, or on Lake Thun from the
+Scheffel Pavilion, or on both from farther up on the belvedere of the
+Heimwehfluh. Others again, it seems, have actually crossed the mild
+Wagner Ravine and ascended the lofty Abendberg of the Grosser Rugen;
+and for this pitiful adventure you hear them pose as veteran mountain
+conquerors who will carry their alpenstocks home with them and forever
+after speak familiarly of edelweiss and the flora of the summits.
+There even appear to have been romantic souls, familiar with Madame de
+Staël’s accounts of St. Berchtold festivals, who have spent the hours
+in dreams of Byron’s “Manfred” down by the old round tower of the
+dilapidated wreckage of Unspunnen Castle—in truth, the most abject
+of ruins, and quite as forlorn as Mariana’s Moated Grange. Not a few
+will have the courage to confess that they have done nothing more
+heroic than stroll by the shaded Goldei promenades along the Aare until
+they came to Unterseen, where they deliberately sat down and gazed to
+satiety at the curious toy houses with the long carved balconies and
+amazing roofs that project beyond all belief.
+
+[Illustration: INTERLAKEN, ON THE HOTEL LAWN]
+
+Thus, by merely catching flying ends of talk, a stranger may imbibe the
+proper amount of enthusiasm and gather some rambling notion of the fine
+things Interlaken has in store for him.
+
+But the real evening-heroes must be looked for at the Kursaal. That is
+where you hear the great champion talkers of the world! What was the
+amiable Tartarin to such as these? Or Baron Munchausen? Or Sir John
+Mandeville? On such deaf ears fell the warning ignored of “Excelsior”:—
+
+    “Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
+    Beware the awful avalanche!”
+
+Behold them at their ease in wicker chairs in the lounging-room,
+stretching the weary limbs that have borne them in safety through a
+hundred Alpine perils. For all who will listen, what tales may be heard
+of desperate daring amid the imminent deadly breach of crevasse and
+avalanche! Under the vivid hand of the actual participant one fairly
+sees the progress of the proud mountain-queller—follows with bated
+breath the slow and tedious early stages, the hazardous upward advance,
+the surmounting of final barriers by dint of ice-axe and life-rope,
+and so enters into the joy of the ultimate conquest of the wild, bleak,
+wind-swept summit. Who would have the hardihood in such a presence to
+speak a word of such contemptible contrivances as mountain tramways and
+funicular railroads! It is enough that the uninitiated should realize
+in the shuddering depths of his soul that there still remains _terra
+incognita_ to the listless, the fat, and the asthmatic. Later on, of
+course, we come to view these hardy characters in a somewhat truer
+perspective; but that will be after we have talked with their guides,
+or ourselves turned heroes and bluffed at like hazards.
+
+All the same, there is no denying the satisfaction a newcomer has,
+in the beginning, in attending the impressive conversation of these
+desperate and intrepid Kursaal adventurers. He certainly feels that
+he has at last reached a region of hardy men and genuine mountain
+hand-to-hand struggles. He hears, with popping eyes, of the lofty
+little hamlet of Mürren, away up in cloudland, whose tiny cottages
+stagger under broad, stone-freighted roofs and where vast, sublime
+Titans scowl awfully from inaccessible heights. They tell him it is a
+region of eternal dazzling whiteness, with patches of black here and
+there that are really forests half buried in snow, and where the air is
+stifling with the constant odor of ice and frost. A truly shuddering
+place, they say, where men cannot hear themselves talk for the
+incessant thundering of plunging avalanches, and where the herdsman
+seldom ventures and the sunrise is never heralded by the alphorn of
+the hardy _Senn_. Later on, to be sure, we journey luxuriously to this
+same Mürren in a comfortable mountain railway and with considerably
+less of peril than attends going to office by elevator in a sky-scraper
+at home; and we find it a green and peaceful retreat, well supplied
+with hotels and gratefully affected by delicate old ladies with weak
+lungs. Just the same, we would not have missed the thrills of that
+first Kursaal account. Alas for all disillusionment, anyway! Most of
+the beautiful white, velvety edelweiss these rocking-chair climbers
+produce from their pockets in proof of their presence in frightful and
+remote ravines has really been bought for a franc on the Höheweg, and
+the chamois they stalked in summit passes generally dwindle down to the
+little ivory ones you find in the shops of Jungfraustrasse.
+
+The truth of the Kursaal, when you get it, is stranger than its
+fiction; as when the talk turns to the progress of the construction
+work on the Jungfrau Railway, that imperishable monument to the genius
+and patience of the late Adolf Guyer-Zeller, of Zurich. It is then
+you hear of the loftiest tunnels in the world, eight and ten miles
+long, through icy mountain shoulders ten thousand feet above the sea;
+of gradients of one in four; of squirrel locomotives so ingeniously
+contrived that if the electric power were suddenly to fail they could
+generate enough by their own weight to clap on brakes and come down
+in safety; of searchlights in the stations on the peaks so strong
+that a man can read by them away over at Thun; of powerful telescopes,
+free to patrons, through which you may observe the occupations of the
+crowds on the Rigi and Mount Pilatus at remote Lucerne; of roomy and
+luxurious stations blasted out of the depths of the mountains, whose
+floors are parquetry and whose light and heat are electricity, with
+twenty-foot windows piercing the rock and appearing, even from across
+the neighboring abyss, like tiny pin-pricks in the perpendicular cliff;
+of the highest post-office on earth, from whose windows you look out
+on twenty glaciers. Of the truth of all this you are to learn later
+on when you make the unforgettable run to Eismeer—“sea of ice”—the
+farthest point so far attained in the steady progress of this marvelous
+railway toward the summit of the Jungfrau, now only a mile or two
+beyond, and which had been the despair of mountain climbers of all time
+until the Meyer brothers conquered it, one hundred years ago.
+
+One finds the evening gossipers of the Kursaal scarcely less
+fascinating when they focus their talents on nearer regions; for
+“distant meadows” are not always “the greenest.” Agreeable things are
+to be heard of Schynige Platte, whither, it appears, you journey by
+cogwheel railway up steep gradients in an observation car behind a
+violently puffing locomotive, past pretty toy stations, around dizzy
+corners, through the startling blackness of unexpected tunnels, and
+so on out and up to the giddy plateau and an overpowering prospect
+of snowfields, misty valleys, gorges, and cataracts upon which
+you gaze in spellbound astonishment from the comfortable terrace
+of the “Alpenrose.” From no other viewpoint, they tell you, does
+the stupendous Mönch (Monk) seem to stand out so squarely in the
+middle distance in his cowl of snow, playing his traditional rôle of
+discouraging duenna between the coveted Jungfrau and the eager Eiger
+whom he repels with an eternal arm of glittering, blue ridge-ice.
+
+When the conversation takes up Grindelwald, it becomes so attractive
+that you make a mental note to go there the first thing in the morning.
+It seems you are to take one of those droll little coaches of the
+Bernese Oberland Road marked “B.O.B.,” and proceed delightedly up the
+green valley of the Lütschine. Very soon will loom before you the
+bleak shoulders of the Wetterhorn, seared and precipitous, capped and
+pocketed with snow; the overwhelming pyramid of the Eiger, fearful with
+gorge and chasm; the regal Jungfrau, immaculate and stupendous; and,
+most uncommon spectacle of all, the awe-inspiring glacier—a frozen
+tumble of scarred boulders and grimy icebergs, pierced by glittering
+ice grottoes and ridged with terraced ways from which you stare down
+into yawning black gulfs that are fringed with giant icicles pendent
+from the frozen ledges. What was it Coleridge said of glaciers?
+
+    “Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
+    And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
+    Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!”
+
+But many there will be at the Kursaal to tell you such tales of the
+enchanted Lauterbrunnen Valley as to incline you to reconsider any
+resolution about going first to Grindelwald. There, it is clear, we
+are to find quality rather than quantity: a narrow ravine through the
+mountains, carpeted with the greenest of turf and hung with glorious
+waterfalls that come tumbling down from lofty limestone precipices.
+We are to drive beside a turbulent stream set with occasional châlets
+whose projecting roofs will suggest broad-brimmed hats jammed down
+over their eyes, and here and there we shall come across a white stone
+church. Shortly there will be raging, leaping torrents all about us,
+vaulting down great cliffs of strange and startling appearance, and
+a vista of wonderland will open before us with the stately Steinberg
+enthroned in the midst. Next, climax on climax, the incomparable
+Staubbach! Before this queen of cataracts every other “hanging thread”
+is instantly and hopelessly dwarfed, as it launches its “wreaths of
+dangling water-smoke” from a thousand feet above. We will think this
+“dust brook” a mere feathery spray fluttered in a capricious breeze,
+so astonishing is the evidence of the resistance of the air and the
+friction of the rocks back of it; but once we have gone behind it and
+observed the “perpetual iris” made by the sun in shining through, it
+will appear a wonder beyond classification. Byron fancied it “the tail
+of the White Horse”; Wordsworth called it “the sky-born waterfall”; and
+Goethe’s dripping song of it runs:—
+
+    “In clouds of spray,
+    Like silver dust,
+    It veils the rock
+    In rainbow hues;
+    And dancing down
+    With music soft,
+    Is lost in air.”
+
+Lesser lights are to be found among the Kursaal heroes who will confess
+to nothing more unusual in the way of activity than salmon-fishing in
+the neighboring lakes or bagging red partridge and hazel hens in the
+upper meadows. But these, by contrast, appear sportsmen of so mean an
+order that the stranger who has fed fat on the succulent yarns of the
+Munchausens receives with impatience information for which, in fact, he
+should be grateful. For instance: that in the winter the thermometers
+of the higher settlements get down to fifty-four below freezing and
+yet the dry air keeps people warmer than in the valleys, and that the
+snow falls in such incredible quantities that artificial lights have
+to be used in the lower stories of the houses all day and trenches cut
+for exit; that up there when the terrific Föhn blows from the south
+no man can make headway against it, but must lie flat on his face and
+hang on and then jump up and dart forward a few yards between gusts;
+that those people can foretell the weather by changes in the color of
+the ice—blue meaning fine, green for snow, and white for fog; that
+the Alpine crows of the summits are dark blue, with yellow beaks and
+red feet, and the “wall-creepers” are gray as mice, with white and
+red spots on their wings and with beaks shaped like awls. At some
+such point as this the stranger will rise with a yawn and go away
+in disgust, annoyed at being taken for a credulous fool. The seed,
+however, has been sown and it flourishes like the fabled mustard. The
+new arrival becomes a confirmed zealot and burns with all the ardor
+of a convert; albeit his brain is a confused and bewildered muddle of
+harsh-sounding mountain names, all, apparently, ending in _horn_.
+
+When he comes out on the lawns he finds the guests still thronging the
+verandas, although it is nearly eleven and prodigies of mountaineering
+are slated for the morrow, and he hears the bands still engaged with
+Puccini and the latest Vienna successes. In the fragrant, dewy gardens
+fountains are playing, and lovers are discreetly screening behind
+clumps of flowering shrubs. Returning excursionists are excitedly
+vocal over the illumination of the Giessbach, whence they have just
+arrived in one of those pompous lake steamers whose sure and cautious
+pace reminded the satirical Victor Tissot of “the dignified motion of
+a canalboat.” To hear these enthusiasts, this appears to have been
+one more of those exceptionable occasions that the absent are always
+missing, and that the renowned waterfall never before roared and
+tumbled and foamed half so extravagantly in making its long, mad plunge
+through the dusky, dark-green firs. Out on the Höheweg a walking-party
+in knickerbockers and hobnailed shoes, and with edelweiss stuck in
+green felt hats, are flourishing their alpenstocks and driving bargains
+with sunburned guides whose names, undoubtedly, are either Melchior or
+Mathias; these latter, we are to learn, are of a fearless but canny and
+laconic nature, “economical as gypsies and punctual as executioners.”
+
+How keenly people take their pleasures in the sparkling evenings of
+Interlaken. How sharp and distinct are sounds and sights, and how
+varied the night life. Each little street is as gayly illuminated as
+though for some special celebration, and so hearty with good cheer that
+one looks for some band of Bernese wrestlers, returning in triumph
+from a festival, to round the next corner and strike up that clarion
+anthem “Stehe fest, O Vaterland.” It would seem as though the “Fête du
+Mi-Été” must actually be in full swing right here, instead of afar in
+the upland pastures. Even at this hour a joyful multitude still streams
+along under the Höheweg’s century-old walnuts, hatless, radiant, and
+babbling in every European tongue. They flock about the confectioners’
+stands and in and out of the curiosity-châlets, greeting acquaintances
+with eager pleasure and proposing jolly plans for to-morrow. Each
+little shop seems selling to capacity. Occasionally a peasant girl
+passes, brusque and stolid, in short skirt and bright bodice, with
+V-shaped rows of edelweiss buttons. Out on the green Höhenmatte lively
+groups loiter about aimlessly, and somewhere in the vague distance
+some one is singing the ever-popular “Trittst im Morgenrot daher.” The
+thickly-wooded Rugen seems a colossal black mastiff asleep with his
+head between his paws. Away up the misty valley, whose vital air is so
+sweet with refreshing odors and so soothing with soft music, the regal
+Jungfrau looms in dim and spectral outline, as ghostly and deceptive as
+any faint feathering of cumulus clouds.
+
+A distant _Jödel_ or the lilt of a plaintive _Ranz des Vaches_ excites
+cordial thoughts of this fair Helvetia and her strong and devoted
+people. “I wonder,” a friend once said to me at Interlaken, “if
+these men and women really appreciate how lovely their country is.”
+Perhaps the best answer is to be found in the desperate resolution
+with which they have held it for six hundred years. Hard necessity has
+taught these brawny mountaineers, whom Mr. Ruskin ungenerously called
+“ungenerous and unchivalrous,” that to be “painfully economical” is
+wiser than to chance privation. One thinks with wonder of the hardships
+endured by the herdsman away up in the mountain pastures, eating his
+sweet-bread and draining his milk-filled wooden bowl in a rude pine
+hut, with goats and kine for comrades, and, for his sole diversion,
+an occasional glimpse of a leaping chamois, a sly mountain fox, a
+white hare, or the whistling, rat-like, shadowy marmot. With his long
+alphorn he calls the cattle home or sounds the vesper hour, until the
+loud echoes shout back from snowfield and ice gorge and the great
+ravens swerve in their swimming flight. In summer, fluttering clouds of
+butterflies will drift above the pansies and Alpine roses and gentians
+on his meadow; but in winter the pallid, velvety edelweiss is all the
+huntsman will find on those frozen ledges. What a wild and tragic
+region it must be when the last _Senn_ has driven his herd down into
+the valleys and old Winter is in undisturbed possession of his “dear
+domestic cave.” The herdsman may rejoice that he is not there then; for
+it becomes a world of black and white, of illimitable snow and blotches
+of black forests, of death and waste and the frightful stillness of
+stupendous heights. Then it is a deserted realm of ice and snow set
+with pitfalls of treacherous crevasses and dreadful perils from hidden
+gulfs and pitiless avalanches; a shuddering space of cloud banks and
+waving vapor-scarfs; a haunted borderland of sinister shapes in the
+writhing mists like wraiths of Alpine legends.
+
+Even so, hundreds of failing foreigners go a long way up in those
+forbidding regions in winter for an “enthusiasm of the blood” and a
+“fairy titillation of the nerves.” And when the days are bright and of
+their peculiar crystal clearness, and the skies are a cloudless blue
+and the sunshine a deluge, these invalids revel in skating and curling
+and the hockey they call “bandy”; and will even try appalling flights
+by ski and toboggan through the “nipping and eager air,” over smooth
+trails of glistening snow, rivaling the records of the “blue-ribbon”
+Schatzalp course at Davos, where they do the two-mile run in something
+under four minutes. There is a chance observation in “Silas Marner”
+that “youth is not exclusively the period of folly!”
+
+Of a summer evening, however, it might not be altogether unpleasant in
+some parts of that cloudland. Could we return with the happy little
+mule-boy who has just now come “jödeling” down from the passes,
+doubtless we should find the sound of goat bells both romantic and
+soothing up there, and might even in time muster a respectable show of
+excitement over the passage of the four-horse diligences as they rattle
+by in storms of dust. Certainly we should come across many a charming
+little wayside inn far up those winding roads that climb to solitude,
+and they would have overhanging eaves and carved wooden balconies and
+boxes of rich orange nasturtiums before the tiny windows with the
+lozenge panes; and when we pushed open the door and walked in, there
+would be a great stone stove in a bar parlor and the face of William
+Tell on an old clock behind the door.
+
+One reads in “Hyperion” of a stolid Englishman so far forgetting his
+cherished reserve as to exclaim: “This Interlaken! This Interlaken! It
+is the loveliest spot on the face of the earth!” It is a nice question
+as to whether any one might not easily be guilty of like enthusiasm,
+provided the time were evening, and that he were capable of responding
+to something of such passionate sympathy for mountain and valley as
+breathes through Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell.” It is impossible not to
+be moved by such unusual beauty or uplifted by such sublimity. Here
+jangled nerves recover rhythm and dulled interests vitality. Boredom
+and ennui fall away, and work and responsibility acquire new value and
+lustre. In the still of these pine-scented evenings, luminous with
+enormous stars, a keen and sobering joy of life takes full and welcome
+possession. Here, if anywhere, the sun of youth will have its afterglow.
+
+There is something like benediction in a night-vision of the magic
+Jungfrau—peerless “bride of quietness.” With such an appealing
+spectacle in view, what wonder that the houses have so many windows,
+or the night “a thousand eyes.” It is the master touch to Interlaken,
+completing and glorifying the picture as it banks the far end of
+the valley with towering clouds of snow. Neither Mont Blanc nor the
+Matterhorn may rival this queen of the Alps, so charming in outline,
+vast in bulk, and ravishing in purity. It could not fail to dominate
+any region of earth, and Interlaken acknowledges its supremacy with a
+completeness that is not without a certain flavor of proprietorship.
+Each hillside has its view-pavilion, belvedere, or simple clearing,
+like so many chapels for devotion. We come each morning for our
+sunrise view, pass the day in adoration, marvel at sunset and the
+afterglow, and close the evening with a wonderwist contemplation of
+the phantom peak in moonlight. Of these “stations” of the mount, the
+afterglow is the climax. Nor is the reason far to seek, once you have
+stood among the awed and reverent throng that crowds the Höhenmatte
+each late afternoon, and have seen black night about you in the valley,
+while, for an hour or more after, the snowfields of the Jungfrau’s
+summits still continued to blaze brilliantly in full sunshine. And
+then, as we watched, there came the color-miracle of glittering white
+merging into every hue of the rose, into scarlet stains and a deluge of
+crimson, into deepening tints and sombre shades of blue, and finally
+fading gradually to a misty, grayish, cloudy shadow as the last fires
+burned out and the great mountain paled to a phantom of the night.
+
+          “When daylight dies,
+          The azure skies
+    Seem sparkling with a thousand eyes,
+          That watch with grace
+          From depths of space
+    The sleeping Jungfrau’s lovely face.”
+
+How spirit-like, how faint and fair the magic mountain swims at night
+among its silver cloud veils! What serenity and majesty invest it! Did
+God here plan another flood, and stay His hand when He had heaped an
+angry ocean into this dread tidal wave and left it piled in suspended
+motion, with giant frozen seas, furious with foam, mounting to that
+appalling crest that seems to dash its icy spray against the very
+skies? No man may look with undaunted heart upon the chaos of its
+glittering snowy plains, vast, chaste, and spectral in the moonlight.
+How base and contemptible appear the petty pursuits of man in the
+presence of such thrilling sublimity! It reconciles him to his lot in
+life, where his “much” is really so very little; and inspires courage,
+and shames the heart from low, ignoble ends.
+
+There is reverent awe in thoughts of the breathless hush of the far,
+white vales no man has trod; the remote and shuddering abysses into
+which the very birds of the air look down with affright. There is
+magic of inspiration in its sublime aloofness—as with those “unheard
+melodies that are sweetest,” those supremest joys that lie beyond
+attainment. Through the hidden, echoing caverns of this fair, pallid
+mount wan spirits of Snowland may even now be dancing; along its
+lonely, lovely glades are “horns of elfland faintly blowing.” Of its
+profoundest and most secret mysteries not even the friendly moon may
+have too curious knowledge—mysteries unknown of man since first the
+morning stars sang together.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+VENICE
+
+11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT
+
+
+A July moon over, a gondola under, a tenor lilting a _barcarolle_,
+thousands with you on the Grand Canal—Venice _a festa_! From a near-by
+belfry, a clock booms eleven. Eleven! and we are only to the Foscari
+Palace. An hour ago we started at the Rialto, a thousand gay gondolas
+with bunting, lanterns, and greens, everybody jostling, singing, and
+shouting, and in the centre, like the queen-jewel of a tiara, the
+brilliant _barca_ filled with orchestra and singers and ablaze in a
+myriad of colored lights. This is a great occasion, the _serenata
+ufficiale_. The _festa_ of the Redentore is near its close. Church
+portals hang with mulberry branches begged by the monks of St. Francis,
+and the people have feasted royally on the luscious black fruit bought
+at the little stands on the Giudecca quays. Last Sunday the priestly
+procession in full canonicals crossed the bridge of boats to the
+Giudecca on its annual pilgrimage to the church of the Redentore.
+Venice thus sustains her reputation as a reverencer of traditions;
+they are burning lamps still in San Marco Cathedral for an innocent
+man who was put to death hundreds of years ago. And so the church of
+the Redentore is packed to suffocation at least one day of the year,
+and after that, with the religious rites off her mind, Venice suddenly
+gives up trying to look solemn and bursts out into the joy and tumult
+of the “Official Serenade.”
+
+This year it is splendid. Every moment belated gondolas are arriving
+like flocks of black swans, with fresh quotas of enthusiasm and an
+increase of gayety and confusion. What laughter and fun! The Canal is
+a hopeless jam. Dancing lanterns play light and shade on thousands
+of bright faces, and the gondoliers, in fresh white blouses and blue
+sailor collars, look like shadows as they lean silently on their long
+oars. In the intervals of the music there is something weird and
+frantic to both their labor and their language as they agonize to
+protect their beloved boats from scratches and smashes and at the same
+time retain positions of vantage in this ice-floe of a tangle as the
+_barca_ struggles forward a few difficult yards to its next point of
+serenade. There are ten or a dozen of these serenade-points, and at
+each the writhing flotilla pauses, and singers and orchestra provide
+the entertainment. It is finest to be afloat, but, oh, the land!
+Red-and-green fire throws into enormous relief fairylike towers and
+turrets that have figured in song and story for a thousand years; and
+in windows, terraces, balconies, and tops there throngs a multitude
+that none of us may number. Every face is turned toward the _barca_;
+every handkerchief waves our way. An occasional searchlight darts
+impartially over them and us, picks out a spot in sudden brilliance and
+as suddenly drops it back into blacker obscurity. But in that brief
+flashing, scattered friends have discovered friends, and gondolas are
+started inching toward each other, and presently parties are joined and
+ice boxes uncovered. After covertly studying the apparently aimless
+movements of our own gondola I finally unearthed a dark conspiracy
+in the reunion line that interested only Paolo, our gondolier, and
+an occasional crony at a neighboring oar. Paolo’s face and manners
+are innocence itself, but his guile is fathoms deep. We could not
+understand why he did not get us nearer to the _barca_, the universal
+objective, until we saw the bottle pass between him and a raven-haired,
+flashing-toothed athlete at the nearest oar and surprised the quick
+greeting and low, musical laugh of congratulation and content. But who
+minds, with Venice _a festa_! And Venice is Paolo’s—not ours, alas!
+
+Night on the Grand Canal! What a realm of witchery! “The horns of
+elfland faintly blowing.” What lullaby could soothe more sweetly
+than the dip of the oar or the soft plash of the dark water under
+the gondola’s prow! The charm of unreality invests the shadowy,
+spiritualized palaces rising like silver wraiths from the quivering
+stream. The summer moon touches each carven arch and column, each
+stone-lace balcony, each fretted embrasure, each delicate ogive window
+and sculptured capital, and lo, a magician’s wand has reared a
+dream-land of unearthly beauty!
+
+In the soft and odorous darkness the birds that love this Venice are
+securely nesting—the gulls, that in winter whirl up the canals with
+harsh clamors of the coming storms, are now at rest along the beaches
+of their blue Adriatic; the swallows and pigeons are sleeping among
+the red tiles of the crooked gables; the sparrows are aloft among the
+mulberry-trees of the Giudecca and the sycamores of the Public Gardens;
+the canaries are dim spots in fragrant magnolia-trees or in spreading
+beds of purple oleander; and the ortolans, robins, and blackbirds
+nestle among azaleas and the heavy festoons of banksias. All their
+music now is hushed, and they are as mute and soundless to-night as
+were their awe-struck sires, long centuries since, when gentle St.
+Francis read them his offices under the cypresses of Del Deserto.
+
+The night is fragrant with the breath of roses, carnations, and
+camellias from palace gardens and with spicy honeysuckle from the
+neighboring Zattere. Visions of stirring romance and adventure crowd in
+on the mind. Down the pebbly paths of yonder garden surely some lover
+has just passed, brave in velvet doublet and silken hose, from laying
+his roses at the satin-slippered feet of his lady! Presently he will
+drift this way in his cushioned gondola and the soft night winds will
+bear her the mellow throb of his guitar and many a plaintive sigh
+of love and Venice. But hush! from out that old black watergate, in
+bravo’s cloak and with muffled oar, who bears the helpless lady away
+through the deep shadows under the garden wall? Hard with your oar,
+my gondolier! A purse of golden ducats if you speed me to San Marco!
+I shall slip this scribbled note into the Lion’s Mouth! Ho, for the
+vengeance of The Ten!
+
+[Illustration: VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA]
+
+If it were day, what a different scene we should have on this twisting
+sea-serpent of a Grand Canal. Venice would then be a sparkling vision
+resplendent with every sea charm, tinted with pinks and opals and
+pearls, and as changeful and full of caprice as any other coquette.
+Instead of this spangle of stars above, we should have a vast expanse
+of pale-blue sky, cloudless and glittering, and the misty reflections
+that now sink faintly deep down into these dark waters would vanish
+before a stream so azure and brilliant that it would seem as if a
+portion of the sky above had been cut and fitted between the palace
+fronts below. And how these mellow old churches and houses would glow
+and their wavering shadows shake in the stream! The exquisite traceries
+on balcony, arch, and column would seem carven of ivory, and from
+under the red-tiled eaves grim heads of stone would stare down over
+sculptured cornices and peep out through delicate quatrefoils and
+creamy foliations. And into these wonder-palaces the eager sun would
+peer to see the lofty ceilings all frescoed and gilded, the floors of
+colored marbles, the carven furniture and faded rich hangings, and the
+deep and arched recesses that overlook the gardens in the rear. And
+what gardens! Mellow brick walls festooned in pale-blue wistaria and
+lined with hedges of white thorn, a solemn cypress in either corner,
+clumps of fig-trees and mulberry and golden magnolia, airy grapevine
+pergolas of slender, osier-bound willow, little paths snugly bordered
+with box, trellises of gorgeous roses, and here and there some antique
+statue or rude stone urn half hidden in color masses of scarlet
+pomegranates and snowy lilies.
+
+The day-life of this famed waterway is very gay and picturesque. Here
+is both energy and idleness, and jolly friendships and laughter and
+light-heartedness. Deep-laden market scows pass ponderously by, piled
+high with fruits and vegetables, the rowers singing at their oars or
+shouting voluble greetings. Fishermen step slowly along, balancing
+baskets on their heads. Swarthy, black-eyed women, in dark skirts and
+gay neckerchiefs and with mauve-colored shawls falling gracefully from
+head to waist, throng the _riva_ shops and bargain over purchases with
+violent gestures and eager earnestness. Priests returning from mass in
+rusty black cassocks loiter among the noisy groups and are received
+with profound bows and reverent touches of the cap. Husky, barefooted
+girl water-carriers, known as the _bigolanti_, stride by with copper
+vessels hanging from the yoke across their shoulders and offer you a
+supply for a _soldo_. Up the intersecting canals endless processions
+are passing over the arching bridges, and you pause, perhaps, to
+observe the varied life from a place by the rail: girl bead-stringers
+with wooden trays full of turquoise bits; garrulous pleasure parties
+off for the Lido; laboring boatmen, breaking out into song; old men
+and women shuffling along to gossip and quarrel around the carven
+well-heads of the little _campi_; and now and then some withered old
+aristocrat on his way to have coffee and chess at Florian’s and then a
+solemn smoke over the “Gazetta di Venezia” before the Caffè Orientale
+in the warm morning sun of the _riva_ of the Schiavoni.
+
+How well the Foscari Palace, there, looks by night. The Foscari
+Palace—poor old Foscari! It is a sad but glowing chapter his name
+recalls. Here lived the great Doge, the least serene of all their
+Serenities. Grown old in power and worn with foreign wars, his heart
+broke over the treason of his worthless son, and the helpless, sobbing
+old man, no longer of use, was deposed by The Ten in his tottering
+age. The very next day he died—and there, in that palace. Just now,
+when the red-fire glowed, a pale campanile stood out of the gloom to
+the right and beyond the palace; that is where they buried him, in the
+church of the Frari. With belated reverence and remorseful at having
+dishonored him a few hours since, they proceeded to make history in
+Venice with the splendor of his obsequies. They clothed him in cloth of
+gold, set his ducal cap upon his head, buckled on his golden spurs,
+and laid his great sword by his side. And thus in solemn pomp, attended
+by nobles and lighted by countless tapers, the pageant passed out of
+San Marco, crossed the Rialto, and came at last to the church of the
+Frari. And there what is left of Doge Foscari lies to this day. It
+is not a poor place to be in, either. The bones of Titian and Canova
+are beside him, a Titian masterpiece glorifies the choir, and on the
+opposite wall are two altar pieces of Bellini’s so lovely as to mark
+the very zenith of Venetian art.
+
+A pause in the music of the serenade brings us suddenly back to the
+Venice of to-night. A vast scramble is in progress. We jostle and
+scrape forward another few yards. The _barca_ sends a light hose-spray
+to right, left, and in front in a desperate effort to clear a passage.
+Dilatory or helpless gondoliers are lightly sprinkled, and all those of
+us who a moment since had been envying their good positions now basely
+give way to howls of joy. No use to struggle: all gondoliers are alike
+in such a crush. A champion Castellani is no better than Paolo, if he
+_is_ strong enough to bend copper _centesimi_ pieces between thumb and
+finger. Presently we stop. The tumult rages, good-naturedly and jolly,
+as the jockeying goes on for improved positions. And then there falls a
+sudden silence. A tenor is singing the “Cielo e Mar” of “La Gioconda.”
+You lie at full length on the cushions, the gondola lifting slowly with
+an indolent sway, and under the spell of the dreamy, witching music
+you watch the smoke of your cigar as it drifts up and over and out and
+away toward the little streets in the dark.
+
+Ah, little streets of Venice; under whatever name of _calle_ or _corto_
+or _salizzada_, you are just the same—bedraggled and delightful! What
+rare surprises are always reserved for each revisit—an overlooked
+doorway, a balcony, some sculptured detail! If the house-fronts are
+plastered and patched—still they are picturesquely discolored. If the
+fantastic windows are out of plumb the gay shutters, nevertheless, are
+charmingly faded and there are pretty faces behind the bars. The roofs
+let in the rain—but how rookish and rickety they are. The battered
+doors are low—but they have knockers that are ponderous and imposing.
+Name plates are surprisingly large and keyholes deep and cavernous. The
+stirrup-handled bell-wires run almost to the tiny iron balconies, away
+up under the oval windows of the eaves—those little balconies that for
+ages have never refused sympathetic regard for the hum of slippered
+feet on the stone pavements below. And there are weathered store-fronts
+with corrugated iron shutters and gilt signs on black boards; and under
+your feet in the pavement are odd little slits for water to run off
+in, that remind you of openings in letter-drops at home. There, too,
+are the shops whose modest output arrays the Venetian poor to such
+advantage, and there are the stores and markets where they bargain
+for _frittole_ of white flour and oil, or _polenta_ of ground corn,
+and personally pick out their sardines at ten for a penny, or indulge
+in a fine _brunrino_ as large as a trout. There one sees picturesque
+lanterns and gay little window-boxes full of flowers away up among
+the chimneys and tin waterpipes. The rooms, perhaps, seem dark and
+gloomy to us of modern houses, but you stop with a thrill of delight
+at the happiness in the voice that carols a gay air from “Traviata”
+somewhere in their depths, and you look up with a smile at the bright
+bird that loves that dark cage. Some carping and fussy visitors may
+compare these rude homes to the dungeons under the “Leads” beyond the
+Bridge of Sighs, but how could they consistently be other than they
+are, venerable and dirty, with splotches of paint and charcoal markings
+and half-effaced pencil-drawings, of cracked plaster full of holes,
+and all toned down by time and weather to a uniform mellow gray! Of
+course, such critics accept, with all Italy, the proud ones with the
+marble tablets that tell that Marco Polo lived there, or Petrarch,
+or Titian, or Garibaldi, but the nameless and undistinguished many
+are quite as worth preserving. Thus one appreciates the inspiration
+of the authorities and applauds their industry in profusely tacking
+up those little ovals of blue tin with the jealous warning in white
+letters, “Divieto di Affisione”—that is, “Don’t spoil these walls
+with placards!” So, peace, harping Philistine, to whom nothing is ever
+hallowed! Though your emotions are thin and your enthusiasms a-chill,
+respect these little byways; and if not for themselves, then for where
+they bring you—to fascinating curiosity shops of the antiquarians
+up the back courts; to charming _campi_ where you stand by graven
+well-heads, wonderwist in the lengthening shadows of historic churches;
+to lichen-grown bridges, themselves pictures, arched over sunny canals
+overhung by gabled windows and flanked by garden walls pale blue with
+wistaria; or (could you have forgotten?) to nothing less than the great
+Piazza itself and glittering San Marco, the supreme jewel-casket of the
+world.
+
+But the wistful “Cielo e Mar” is ended, and we move along to opposite
+the Accademia, treasure-temple of Venetian art. You uncovered just
+then, my comrade of the night, and out of reverence to the Titian
+Assumption, I dare say. I uncovered, too, but it was to the madonnas
+and saints of Giovanni Bellini. Do you know them well? No? Not the
+Santa Conversazione? Ah, then life still holds a delight in reserve for
+you.
+
+A sudden great and universal hush has fallen on canal and shore.
+Another tenor, sweet and vibrant as a bell, breathes that tenderest of
+all serenades, the one from “Don Pasquale.” At all times irresistible,
+it seems doubly so now. The faces that you see are grave and eager and
+transported. The silence and rapt attention is a tribute beyond words
+to composer and singer; and where else but in Italy would a multitude
+hush to a whisper when music sounds, and break into wild tumult when
+it ceases? A few weeks here, and one comes to understand that music
+is the very breath and life of these people. The vagabond Venetian,
+penniless but happy, comes out of his doze in a corner of a sunny
+_riva_ and before his mouth has settled from its yawn it is rounded
+into a song. A bottle of cheap wine, a loaf of bread, and a guitar
+provide joy enough for an army in the family parties of the poor that
+float out on to the lagoon in rough market gondolas at sunset. Verdi
+and Rossini make work light for women, walk to business with the men,
+and hum comfort and courage all day. And so one needs to be discreet
+and silent when a solo begins or be prepared for an instant and
+tempestuous rebuke. But there seems little need for a warning to-night,
+with the hand of Venice so strong upon us.
+
+Between serenades one takes his ease on the cushions and looks about
+on the people around him. Some one begins to whistle the jolly old
+“Carnival of Venice,” and it is promptly taken up on all sides, bolder
+spirits even venturing upon the variations. A German gives us the
+Fatherland’s version, about the hat that had three corners. An enormous
+Spaniard near at hand bellows a fragment of “I Pagliacci,” and is
+thunderously applauded. His friends, embarrassed but elated, urge him
+on to a second effort, which is received with indifference. On his
+third attempt he is hissed. Such is the caprice of an open-air audience
+in Italy.
+
+The jolly stag party in the gondola to the right presses upon us the
+hospitality of the capacious hamper, which we decline with a thousand
+thanks and in gestures more intelligible than our pidgin-Italian.
+At our elbow two slender American women in black provide excellent
+eavesdropping entertainment. Here is talk to our liking, thrilling with
+the names of men of fame who knew and loved this Venice. “Just over
+there, Helen, is the palace where Browning lived and died. What an
+elaborate place for a poet! Howells lived next door, you know, when he
+wrote his ‘Venetian Life.’ These places are ever so much finer than the
+one farther down where Goldoni wrote his comedies. Oh, don’t you know
+the Goldoni house? It is this side the Rialto, just opposite the Byron
+Palace with the blue-striped gondola posts.” “I think,” says the other,
+“that the memories are quite as rich farther on. At the Hotel Europa,
+you remember, Chateaubriand once lived, and so did George Eliot; and
+from there you can see the Danieli where George Sand and Alfred de
+Musset sought happiness but only found misery.” At mention of the
+Europa the face of her friend is transfigured and our own hearts beat
+high in sympathy with the reverence of the lowered voice: “Wagner wrote
+‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Europa. He died in the palace where the
+three trees stand, away down beyond the Rialto.” Oh, deathless Venice!
+Oh, universal Love! They marvel at this elfin world—the English
+father, mother, and son in the gondola ahead.
+
+“It is a mode of mind.”
+
+“Or a form of hypnosis; a psychological phase.”
+
+The boy turns from the distant fairy candles of San Marco and regards
+them with amaze and disapproval. His enthusiasms are keen and a-quiver
+and the freshness of life’s morning is on his face. “Don’t analyze,”
+he says. “Just breathe it and feel it.” The parents exchange amused
+glances and smile indulgently. “‘Out of the mouth of babes and
+sucklings,’” quotes the father under his breath; but we know, and they
+know, that they have been answered.
+
+Gorgeous silks and priceless tapestries and rare Oriental stuffs have
+doubtless often hung from the balconies of the palace on the right in
+the great gala days of the wonderful past when the Carnival lasted
+half a year. The law had not yet ruled that all gondolas must be a
+uniform solemn black, and the cradle-like boat of to-day, for all its
+brass dolphins and carven scenes from the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” would
+have cut a sorry figure beside the sumptuous ones of an earlier time,
+with their mountings of silver and gold, profusion of rich colors,
+upholstery of enormous value, and bearing owners of fabulous wealth
+whose names were written in the city’s Book of Gold. Ah, those were
+the triumphant days when foreign princes waited, half a hundred at a
+time, to have the judgment of the Venetian Senate on the affairs of
+their states; when royalty was no unusual spectacle on the Piazza of
+San Marco; when the argosies of the world, “with portly sail,” came
+to anchor in these waters; when Dante and Petrarch were received as
+ambassadors; when the Admirable Crichton would be tossed a hundred
+ducats for amusing the Senate with an extemporized Latin oration; and
+when his Serenity, the Doge, on Ascension Day fared forth in dazzling
+splendor to espouse the sea from the throne of his sumptuous Bucentoro.
+The glory of that old and powerful Venice can never pass from the
+memory of men. Whole libraries preserve it in imperishable record. It
+is interesting, too, to note how it affected bygone visitors just as it
+does us to-day—as when one turns the pages of John Evelyn’s “Diary”
+and smiles to see how soon it was after his “portmanteau” had been
+“visited” at the Dogana customs-offices that he pronounced the Merceria
+to be “one of the most delicious streets in the world for the sweetness
+of it,” and learned with amaze of the skill and rapidity of Venetian
+artisans who, while King Henry III of England was one day visiting the
+Arsenal, built a galley, rigged, and finished it for launching, and
+cast a cannon of sixteen thousand pounds and put it on board,—and
+all while his Majesty was having luncheon. There was, indeed, a great
+deal of the marvelous about men who could contrive glass goblets so
+sensitive as to betray the presence of poison, or who could at so early
+an age make such exquisite books as the Aldine classics, to the despair
+of publishers for hundreds of years to follow.
+
+Just now, in the fitful glare of red-lights, hundreds of eager Venetian
+faces, transported as always by the spirit of Carnival, were seen
+in excited groupings in every nook and corner of the neighboring
+_fondamente_. One thinks how different is the present scene from
+those these people are accustomed to look upon on other nights. You
+would find them then in the little family squares whose corners are
+shrines of the Virgin set with flowers and illumined with candles.
+Husband and wife will, perhaps, have spent the early evening in
+gallery seats at the Teatro Goldoni, and Giovanni, weary with a long
+day at the _traghetto_, would have finished thumbing the headlines
+of the day’s “L’ Adriatico” and would now have his friends about
+him, and Maria would let the _bambino_ stay up a little longer, and
+all would feast with prodigious merriment and satisfaction on the
+ever-popular _soupe au pidocchi_,—which is mussel-broth flavored with
+spices,—to be followed by Chioggia eels and white wine of Policella.
+Neighboring women would, of course, drop in for their dearly loved
+gossip, hatless, with silver pins fastening their blue-black hair,
+coral beads around their necks, and draping shawls thrown over their
+bright waists. And presently some withered old coffee-roaster would
+drag himself in with his fragrant ovens glowing, the bright flames
+leaping, and toffee-venders would plead for sales. With the ease of
+sleight-of-hand a guitar suddenly makes its appearance out of nowhere
+and everybody enthusiastically joins in some haunting, languorous,
+dreamy _villotte_ dear to the hearts of Venetians. Just around the
+corner lounging groups would be scattered before café doors and voices
+would be humming in low, eager talk. The usual wrangling and bargaining
+would be in progress at the cooking-stalls piled high with fish and
+garlic, _polenta_, cabbages, and apples. In near-by _trattorie_ with
+sanded floors artistic bohemia, with ambition numbed by the latest
+African sirocco, battens on bowls of macaroni in a turmoil of smoke and
+confusion. In the dark interior of a neighboring wineshop one would
+find the wonderful golden-browns that Rembrandt loved, as a single
+oil lamp glows on the weathered faces of a circle of old cronies.
+And somewhere, just at hand, a gondolier’s weird and fascinating cry
+of “Ah, Stalì!” would be heard; and all about them Venice would be
+crooning her ancient lullaby in the ceaseless, low lapping of water on
+stone steps.
+
+All together and forward once more, to opposite the church of the
+Salute. We have lost our recent neighbors and have an entirely new
+set. The changes in the grouping are like the shuffling units of a
+kaleidoscope. A brilliant company is gathered on the balconies of
+Desdemona’s Palace, but Othello is not among them—another piece of
+calculated devilty, no doubt, on the part of the crafty Iago! Still,
+Portia is there from flowery Belmont and with her are Jessica and
+Lorenzo. The music is now from melodious old “Dinorah,” charmingly
+rendered and just as soothing as the first time one ever heard it.
+The Salute stands out impressively in her great domes and elaborate
+spirals. It is beautiful, of course, by night, but then if it were day
+we might run inside and revel in Titians and Tintorettos. The fantastic
+columns fade and flash as the red and green fires smoulder or flame,
+and the gilded Fortuna on the dome of the adjoining Dogana catches some
+of the glitter and generously sends it on to the Seminario in the rear.
+
+Some one calls my name from among the oleanders of the Britannia
+terrace, just opposite. What a delight to be known by name in this
+charmed city! I look up at the adjoining hotel and there are the
+windows of my room, and I know that within in the dark my clothing and
+articles of travel lie about. With secret wonder I whisper to myself
+that I, after all the years of waiting and hoping, _I_ am actually a
+part of Venice!
+
+One might think there could not possibly be any more gondolas in all
+the city outside of to-night’s tremendous gathering; but even now you
+could find them floating lazily about the lagoons, or away out toward
+the Lido where the moist winds are ruffling the water and the distant
+Bride of the Sea seems only some sort of bright exhalation. Theirs is
+a languorous and listless drifting and their dim lamps waver slowly
+like glowworms. Little need there for the musical wails of “Ah, Premì!”
+“Ah, Stalì!” Little of such complaint as Byron made that gondoliers are
+songless, for one could not ask for more plaintive and soothing melody
+than the low, passionate crooning of the barefooted boy at the oar.
+And, perhaps, in the musky dark of silent canals more gondolas than one
+are even now stealing lightly and with love’s devious purposes under
+the fretted balconies of the star-eyed daughters of Venice, while Beppo
+muffles his oar to the warning of Tom Moore:—
+
+    “Row gently here, my gondolier;
+    So softly wake the tide,
+    That not an ear on earth may hear
+    Save hers to whom we glide!”
+
+It seems weeks since, in the cool of this very morning, out at the
+little island of Burano, I lunched under shady locusts in the quiet
+garden of “The Crowned Lion.” It was a pleasant stop on the way to
+deserted old Torcello—Torcello that mothered Venice, but now sleeps,
+a clutter of grass-grown ruins, in the appalling stillness of her
+weedy canals and thickets of blackberry hedges. Within a cable length
+of where our gondola is now resting a black, tarry fishing-bark tugs
+at anchor. If it were day and her sails were set, one could not help
+being delighted over the oranges and reds and blues of her patched
+and weathered canvas, the curve of the elaborately painted bow, and
+the spirited air of the curious figurehead. Unchanged survivors of
+the fading Past are these sturdy old _bragozzi_ of Chioggia, and one
+could not ask for a braver show than they present when they hoist their
+painted sails to dry in one long line from the Public Gardens to the
+Doge’s Palace.
+
+It was at Chioggia that we loitered, a few days back, and fed on
+picturesqueness to satiety. We have but to close our eyes—and there
+are the grizzled old fellows in red _berrettas_, trousers rolled to
+their wiry brown knees and great hoops of yellow gold in their ears.
+When the midday sun was hottest we found them sitting in the shade of
+their fishing-boats’ sails, mending their nets with wooden bodkins and
+brown twine. In the old days, when the hand of Venice was all-powerful
+in this part of the world, the Chioggians were the gayest and most
+picturesque people of these islands. Artists still consider them the
+purest types of Venetians, but they are a sad and melancholy lot now,
+as if burdened with the heritage of glorious memories. It seemed to me
+that the old men were the happiest living things in Chioggia; then,
+perhaps, came the boys, then the girls, and last of all the women—and
+the older the women the gloomier. The flirt of a sober mantilla is the
+nearest they ever come nowadays to gayety.
+
+We shall never forget, nor ever want to, that wonderful sail back from
+Chioggia to Venice. Listening to the music on the Canal to-night the
+memory of it seems compact of dreams, or as the florid cloister-fancy
+of a Middle-Ages monk that we had read in some illuminated old volume
+bound in vellum and clasped with gold. There was all the vitalizing
+pageantry of sunset about us, all the immensity of sky and sea, and
+many a bright little island rising out of the rippling lagoon this
+side the marshy wastes. The yellow strips of Pellestrina and Malamocco
+topped the waves in two long lines, like half-submerged reefs of gold.
+Above was a vast dome of turquoise glinted with pinks and grays, and
+with here and there a little heap of snowy clouds. Every phase of the
+wonderful sky was reproduced in the water. The sun reflected a second
+sun of no less ruddy fire which burned across the sea in a broad
+highway of shaking light that rolled to our very feet. The piled and
+fleecy clouds were steeped in gold, and bands of purple mists across
+Shelley’s Euganean Hills were pierced by it through and through.
+Venice, a mirage of the azure sea, rose slowly as we drew nearer, a
+witchery of towers, campaniles, palaces, painted sails, and drifting
+gondolas. As the dimming beauty faded with the brief Eastern twilight
+and we were gazing in awe on the enchanting panorama, there suddenly
+loomed a fresh and added glory, for just above the topmost pinnacle of
+stately San Giorgio floated a young summer moon!
+
+Beauty has here an abiding-place. Venice is doubtless a fairer vision
+now, with its myriad lights, than when the only illumination was
+from flickering tapers before the corner shrines of the Virgin. More
+comfortable it surely is than when St. Roche himself was baffled by
+more than seventy plagues. The jaunty boatman and his peerless gondola
+still charm us, and dustless and noiseless the city continues musical
+with the cheery hum of voices and the soft shuffle of feet. In the
+cool twilight of the churches marvels of sculpture and immortal
+canvases still inspire and enthrall. Time has added new charms to the
+marbles of bell tower, church, and palace, and nature still employs
+a witchery scarce equaled elsewhere in decking the Sea City with
+flowers. From the water-lilies of the Brenta, the flaming begonia
+trumpets of the Giudecca, the pale sea-lavender of the Dead Lagoon, the
+rose-pergolas and oleander-cloisters of San Lazzaro, the primroses and
+sea-holly of the Lido wooded with odorous acacias and white-flowered
+catalpas, and carpeted with crimson poppies and the snowy Star of
+Bethlehem, away out to the sand dunes and lush grasses of Triporti,
+there continually rises an inexhaustible incense of fragrance and
+beauty.
+
+The serenade is nearly ended. Anticipating the coming rush at the
+San Marco Piazza, a word to Paolo starts us laboriously toward the
+outskirts of the flotilla. From the Royal Gardens to the _molo_ is a
+matter of only a dozen plunges or so of the stout oar, spurred by an
+offer of extra _lire_ for extra speed. Off flies our gondola, frowning
+as superbly as ever did swan in the eye of Keats. We dart alongside
+the wet quay beyond the Bridge of Sighs and one of those superannuated
+old gondoliers called _rampini_ earns a _pourboire_ by steadying the
+prow as we jump ashore at the base of the column of San Marco’s winged
+lion. St. Theodore looks down placidly from the vantage-point above
+his crocodile as we pass between these storied pillars—“fra Marco
+e Todaro,” as the Venetians say when they mean “between pillar and
+post.” The _piazzetta_ is already crowded and our hope of a table at
+Florian’s is dwindling. Never did the stately Sansovino Library or the
+airy colonnades and warm Moorish marbles of the Palace of the Doges
+look finer, but past them we speed with no time for the scantiest of
+glances at the famous quatrefoils and the thirty-six pillars with the
+renowned capitals, and in we hurry to the broad and glorious piazza
+and its flooding of light and life. Florian’s is in a state of siege.
+Every table seems taken and hungry people by hundreds are clamoring
+for places. The Quadri, across the square, would probably have had to
+content us had not the efficacy of frequent past tips saved the day,
+and my nightly waiter welcomes us with his dry and mirthless smile
+and slips us into a snug harbor under the very guns of the enemy. My
+companions are officers of the American squadron now lying at Triest
+and they pass their professional opinion that the strategy was capital.
+But though officers, they are _young_ officers, and Venice has captured
+them hand and foot. Scarcely have we completed our supper-order when
+the flowing strains of the Coronation March from “The Prophet” roll in
+from the _molo_ in the _barca’s_ good night, and, as if it were riding
+in on that splendid musical tide, the noisy, jubilant host of the
+_festa_ comes pouring upon us.
+
+And what a fascinating spectacle does this grand, unrivaled old square
+then present! Were Byron here to-night he would still have to call
+it “the pleasant place of all festivity.” No chance now to study the
+designs in this vast flooring of marble or to coax a half-persuaded
+pigeon on to your shoulder. In every part of its two hundred yards of
+arcaded length, set with storied architecture so inspiring by beauty
+and association that it moved even the self-contained Mr. Howells to
+exclaim, “It makes you glad to be living in this world,” and under the
+blaze of its rimming of clustered lights and shops and thronged cafés,
+there storms and chatters a vigorous, cheery, light-hearted multitude
+fresh from the stimulus of the glittering water pageant. It comes in
+through the _piazzetta_ with such a rush that one looks for the band
+and band-stand, too, to be swept the full length of the square and out
+under the arches of the Royal Palace. Such laughing and uproar! Such
+a sirocco of gestures and hailstorm of crackling exclamations! This
+human tidal wave of the Adriatic pours down the middle, seethes along
+the edges, and swirls and eddies in the remotest corners. One sees in
+it happy, voluntary exiles from almost every part of the world, but
+to-night the _festa_-loving Venetians predominate. Every local type
+is here; from the languid patrician, come in from her country estate
+and now sipping anise-water here at Florian’s, and the vapid and
+scented fashionable youths with carnations in their buttonholes, to the
+flashing, black-eyed shop-girls with red roses in their crisp black
+hair and graceful mantilla shawls dropping back from their tossing
+heads, and the vigorous, smiling artisans, easy and jaunty of gait,
+with soft hats pushed back at every rakish angle on their curly heads.
+How happy and transported Maria is to-night, in her new black skirt and
+crimson bodice, and how the sultry red smoulders through the olive of
+her cheeks as her little hands whirl in a tempest of gestures and the
+lightnings of excitement play in her midnight eyes! And no less carried
+away is Giovanni, beside her,—proud as Colleoni on the big bronze
+horse,—though he lets her do most of the talking and contents himself
+with approving in quick, expressive shrugs. All classes of society
+are with us—“rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief”; and old Shylock
+himself, who was most of these, “dreaming of money-bags.” Scraps of
+gay, slurring song are continually bubbling over and flashes of wit and
+snappy repartees go flying to and fro. Flower-girls thread the press
+and insist upon pinning _boutonnières_ on the men, and street merchants
+move about offering everything from curios to caramel-on-a-stick. A
+crowd gathers about a blind old troubadour thrumming a dirty guitar
+and struggling to force his rusty voice along the melodious course of
+some popular _villotte_, and presently he will be led among the tables
+before the cafés and _centesimi_ and silver _lire_ will jingle into his
+ragged hat.
+
+It is little enough to say that no scene ever had a more romantic
+setting. The quaint old Venetian quatrain does this famed spot scant
+justice:—
+
+    “In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,
+    And chargers four that seem about to fly;
+    There is a timepiece which appears a tower,
+    And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”
+
+In the moonlight the sculptured and arcaded old buildings glow like
+mellow ivory around three sides of it, and it is warmed and vitalized
+by bustling cafés and brilliant shop windows set with tempting snares
+of artful jewelry and cunningly wrought glass. Strong and proud the
+great Campanile towers upward into the clear night, away above the tops
+of the three tall flag-staffs. The sumptuous Cathedral, in its wealth
+of glowing color and lavish adornment, makes one think of a vast heap
+of glittering treasure piled up by returning Venetian pirates in answer
+to the accustomed question, “What have you brought back for Marco?”
+One can scarcely take his eyes off its lofty, yawning portals, its
+gates of bronze, its forest of columns, its sweeping arches glowing in
+every color of brilliant mosaics, its profusion of creamy sculptures,
+its canopied saints and statued pinnacles and its great Byzantine
+domes billowing into the purple sky. On the ancient clock tower of the
+Merceria the fierce winged lion of St. Mark’s holds a resolute paw on
+the open Gospels, and the bronze bellringers swing twelve ponderous
+blows and hang up the hour of midnight on a dial of blue and gold.
+As they pause at the completion of their labors and look down on the
+sea of faces turned toward them from the Piazza they seem so nearly
+galvanized into life that it would scarcely surprise one to hear them
+shout, “What news of the argosies of Antonio?”
+
+With the sparkling beauty of Venice so irresistible it is a terrible
+temptation to my companions to hurry straight back to Triest and come
+over with their battleship and, like dashing naval Lochinvars, force
+an espousal of this incomparable Bride of the Sea. Vain thought! It is
+Venice herself who has always done the espousing; fully to possess her
+it must be on her own conditions of complete surrender.
+
+How inevitable it seems at night that you must take the step; must cry
+out, once and for all, to fellow voyagers on the Dead Lagoons of Life:
+“Ho, brothers! No more of the drab and wretched wastes for me! I am for
+beauty and romance—‘in Venice, all golden, to dream!’ I shall dwell in
+this enchanted realm of _dolce far niente_ and float with my gondola
+into the final Sunset. Companions on Life’s waters, ‘Ah, Stalì’!”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PARIS
+
+MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M.
+
+
+Like a practiced coquette, Paris, the world’s _enchanteresse_, reserves
+for the supreme moments of midnight her rarest resources of gayety and
+charm. Her last laughs are her best. And decidedly, she is dangerous
+when laughing. Beyond question, her glowing eyes at midnight are
+wonderfully sweet and beguiling; and hers is the skill to touch the
+bright hours with the most delectable _couleur de rose_. There is
+satisfaction for each desire. “Would monsieur sup?” The most amazing
+cuisine in the world awaits your pleasure. “Would monsieur stroll?”
+The sparkling lights and rustling trees of the fairest of boulevards
+fairly drag you their way. “Would he drive?” You raise your hand; a
+_fiacre_ dashes up; and soon the Bois and the Champs-Élysées, cool,
+scented, dewy, receive you gladly to their enchanting retreats. “Would
+he join a revel—just a little one?” _Cabarets_, _cafés-chantants_,
+_bals publics_ were designed for no other purpose. “Would he look on
+at life?” “_Garçon vite! Une demi-tasse—une; sur la terrasse!_”—and
+heart could not ask for a madder, merrier, more absorbing spectacle
+than that which will whirl and surge by the very edge of your little
+round table. “Eh? Monsieur has a fancy for nature and solitude? _Mon
+Dieu! C’est un original, celui-là! Mais_”—and you will find nowhere
+gardens lovelier than those of the Tuileries, elegant with statues and
+carpeted with flowers. Thus at every point the charmer wins. What is
+left but surrender? She seems the very Queen of Heart’s Desire.
+
+Of course, the night side of Paris is her most trivial side. But then
+visitors have always refused to take her seriously at any time. No
+matter how many wonderful achievements have been crying out to them all
+day that this is one of the most extraordinary and advanced communities
+to be found anywhere on the face of the earth, still they stubbornly
+cling to the conviction that all is frivolity here and that night is
+Paris’s supreme period and pleasure seeking her most conspicuous and
+characteristic rôle. Accustomed to the droll ideas of foreigners,
+and bothering little about them except to find occasional amusement,
+Paris shrugs her shoulders in indifference and turns on more lights.
+Brilliant, charming, and ingenious she creates what she prefers—an
+atmosphere of gayety and beauty. And the visiting world purrs about
+her in joy of a fascination it cannot find elsewhere and salves its
+own patriotism with the conclusion that this is her principal _raison
+d’être_.
+
+As a matter of fact, the Parisians are masters of the art of living.
+As their kitchen is the best, so is their drawing-room and study.
+All the affairs of every day are handled with ease and grace, with
+imagination and a kind of poetic skill that adorns even the ugly
+and commonplace and invests them with attractiveness and charm. The
+cheery light-heartedness that is a fundamental trait of Parisians
+converts the life of their streets and parks into scenes delightful
+either to contemplate or share. Indeed, they often seem to be only
+grown-up children, so gracefully have they retained the fresh and
+stimulating enthusiasm of youth—so rueful and pouting over a rainy
+day; so exuberant over a bright one. And the best of it is that there
+is an infection to their high spirits that passes into the observer
+and clears his perception of the folly of worry and depression, and
+shows him the value and availableness of optimism and good cheer. Such
+is the glorious influence of a people whose attitude toward life is
+essentially one of hope and zest.
+
+No one is going to deny that the Parisian is vain. Indeed, his attitude
+toward the rest of the earth, while patient and polite, is at bottom
+patronizing and even a little supercilious. And sometimes, it must
+be confessed, this gets on the visitor’s nerves. One cannot give out
+admiration forever and rest content with getting none back. It is
+easy to understand the mood of bitter derision into which even so
+enthusiastic an admirer as Edmondo de Amicis fell when he wrathfully
+wrote: “Three hundred ‘citizens’ hang over the side of a bridge to
+see a dog washed; if a drum passes, a crowd collects; and a thousand
+people, in one railway station, make a tremendous uproar by clapping
+their hands, shouting, and laughing because one of the guards of the
+train has lost his hat!” Yet De Amicis came shortly to see that this
+is only the Parisian temperament, which he admired in so many other
+of its manifestations, and that under it lie solid qualities of the
+highest and rarest order. So he forgave Paris, as everyone does, and
+took her again to his heart—albeit, I mistrust, with reservation and
+a lingering grain of suspicion and perhaps something of the foreign
+conviction that she is not always to be taken quite seriously.
+
+[Illustration: PARIS, ON THE BOULEVARD]
+
+To the vast majority of visitors Paris by night means the boulevards.
+The beauty of these famed thoroughfares, the cosmopolitan and
+fascinating sea of humanity that flows through them, the means
+of amusement that abound, and all the many little refinements of
+comfort and elegance to be seen on every hand place them in a class
+by themselves among the city streets of the world. In the matter of
+virility the life of the boulevards is amazing. Every one seems to be
+at his keenest when he walks there. Anticipation is fairly skipping
+on tiptoe. The old _boulevardier_, the traditional _flâneur_, has not
+been disappointed of his evening’s diverting on-look these forty years
+or more, and he can, therefore, clothed and gloved and caned _à la
+mode_, proceed with his stroll in unhasting dignity, confident that the
+usual amusing spectacle will unfold itself in good time. But the new
+arrivals and the visitors of a few weeks show in their eager faces
+that nothing is going to escape them and that a thorough debauch of
+pleasure is the least they propose to make out of all the bewildering
+light and life about them. From the Place de la Concorde to the Place
+de la République a laughing, brilliant, light-hearted multitude pours
+along all night with infinite bustle and chatter. Between twelve and
+one o’clock it is at its gayest. The theatres and _cafés-concerts_
+have emptied their audiences into the stream, which is swollen to the
+very curb, and the driveways are whirling with an enormous outpouring
+of busses, motors, and cabs. The size of the loads the hired victorias
+and _fiacres_ will accommodate is determined solely by the inclination
+and interest of the impertinent fat _cocher_ in the varnished plug
+hat; and it is nothing to see a conveyance, that ordinarily carries
+but two people, trundling merrily along behind a sprung-kneed nag,
+with a man and several girls piled inside and all waving hands to the
+crowd with the vastest _camaraderie_ imaginable. This is of a piece
+with the universal high spirits and good humor that prevail along the
+boulevards. It is all fun and frolic, and everybody is in it. The rows
+of chairs and tables on the sidewalks before the cafés really make
+the spectators a part of the show; and the groups before the artistic
+little newspaper kiosks and the comfortable sitters on the green
+benches along the curb are, in spite of themselves, part and parcel of
+the big family, with something of the intimacy and allied interest of a
+village street at fair-time. And it always seems fair-time in Paris by
+night. The profusion of lights that have won it the title of “La Ville
+Lumière” gives it an appearance of being perpetually _en fête_, and the
+ebullient crowds complete the illusion.
+
+But the Grand Boulevards have no monopoly of the night attractiveness
+of the city. All over town stretch broad, clean streets with shade
+trees and double lines of lights and rows of stone and stucco
+houses. In the main these houses resemble each other rather closely;
+slate-colored, Mansard-roofed, and with shallow iron balconies running
+full length of the second, fourth, and fifth stories. By night they
+fairly exhale an atmosphere of tranquillity and peace. There are,
+besides, hundreds of beautiful roomy squares, flooded with light
+and set with comfortable benches that are seldom without contented
+occupants. Such a notable one as the Place de la Concorde is without
+its equal in any city. It costs the three and a quarter millions of
+people who live in and about Paris more than $70,000,000 a year to
+maintain their city’s reputation for beauty; and not a sou of it is
+begrudged. For Paris is the whole world to most of them, and many a
+Parisian politician had rather be Prefect of the Seine and rule this
+town than president of the whole Republic. And with what reason! “It
+is a world-city,” said Goethe, “where the crossing of every bridge or
+every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a
+piece of history has been unfolded.”
+
+Whoever turns from the boulevards for a space will learn of other kinds
+of life that are in full cry at midnight. What of the studio revelries
+of the Quartier Latin? There abound jollity and earnestness and strong
+friendships with few of the gilded accessories of the _Rive Droite_.
+The brightest of these scenes are often the most meagre in setting. A
+group of jovial, smoking, singing companions—and about them an easel
+and sketching-board, a dingy divan, a few battered chairs, a stove in
+the corner with the remains of the last meal, a huddle of draperies and
+hangings, fragments of casts and uncompleted sketches on the walls, and
+a corner table piled with a dusty litter of squeezed-out paint-tubes,
+broken brushes, magazine illustrations, a dog-eared book or two, and a
+generous strewing of cigarette butts. The cleanest things in sight are
+a freshly scraped palette and a sheaf of brushes stuck in a half-filled
+jar of water. With so much of equipment your merry, care-free artist
+squeezes the orange of life to its smallest drop, and cares not a sou
+how the whole world wags, provided all is well between the Place de
+l’Observatoire and the Seine.
+
+Then, again, were you to pass some pleasant house on a quiet avenue
+where an evening’s party is ending, you could not help but linger under
+the windows in delight to hear some tender song of Massenet’s, some
+soothing _berceuse_ of Ropartz’s, a haunting plaint of Saint-Saëns or a
+vitalizing torrent of Chaminade’s.
+
+And perhaps where you might most expect just such a scene as this,
+behind the closely-drawn window draperies of some handsome apartment,
+there is gathered around a broad green table a group of flushed,
+excited men to whom a hard-eyed _croupier_ is singing the abominable
+siren song of “Faites vos jeux,” “Les jeux sont faits,” “Rien ne va
+plus.” It seems quiet and peaceful enough. You could scarcely believe
+that there hangs above it the shadow of the little gray Morgue down
+behind Notre-Dame!
+
+Before returning to the giddy boulevards for a final _petit-verre_
+and an exchange of pleasantries with café acquaintances, one likes
+to finish a cigar in an aimless ramble through such placid scenes as
+these. Not only may he so indulge the pleasing diversion of speculating
+over the kinds of home life that go on within these houses, but
+incidentally he escapes the tumult of the maelstrom for a few calm
+moments, and eventually sees for himself what a pity it is that so many
+night fascinations should abound in Paris and be enjoyed by so few.
+He may like to draw moral conclusions from the peace-loving pigeons
+nesting in the war-glorifying reliefs of the gigantic and towering Arc
+de Triomphe, or take satisfied note of the monuments of the victories
+of peace that dot the broad avenues that radiate from it. One such
+monument is always under the eyes of the _boulevardiers_ in the form
+of that most glorious of all temples to music, the Paris Opera House.
+It is especially impressive by night, with the shadows blending
+columns and statues in bewildering beauty, and high-lights from the
+street lamps glinting on sculptured balustrades and cornices, chalking
+the edges of half-hidden arches and penciling the delicate detail of
+medallions and reliefs. Nor, it must be allowed, are devotees often
+wanting for that fair Greek temple of La Madeleine—so chaste and of
+such imposing dignity, rimmed with giant columns and embowered in
+verdure.
+
+After like fashion does night enhance the beauty of the great, rambling
+Louvre—though this may only be Diana’s way of paying tribute to the
+Arts and of venerating the sacred shrine of a sister divinity, that
+serenest and sublimest of goddesses, the Venus de Milo. There is
+certainly something of almost ethereal comeliness by night to those
+long vistas of columns and arcades, to the shadowy sculptures of the
+pavilions, the lines of graceful caryatids and the blustering triumphal
+groups of the pediments. One might fancy the Louvre wearing a look of
+grave disapproval over the hubbub that drifts in from the boulevards
+were he not aware how carefully it treasures so many pictorial
+skeletons in its own closets. Boucher and Watteau are on record with
+infinitely worse scenes than these. But now it has the appearance of
+some palace capitol of Shadowland; and before it in perfect sympathy
+lies its beautiful dream-kingdom, the hushed and fragrant gardens of
+the Tuileries,—fair as the golden Hesperides,—fresh with fountains,
+silvered in patches with little shining lakes, marquetried in flowers,
+and peopled with shadowy forms of pallid marble.
+
+From a Seine bridge one notes the wizard liberties the reckless
+moon takes with the colonnaded dome of the sombre Panthéon. And,
+more astonishing still, the magic tricks it plays with the adorned
+and enormous bulk of Notre Dame—now veiling, now revealing massive
+buttress and delicate rose-window, some recessed arch tucked full
+of sculptured saints all snugly foot to head, or a goblin band of
+hideous gargoyles that leer ghoulishly down from out the purple
+haze of the towers. One could well wish, however, for a closer view
+of that exquisite survivor of the Valois kings, the peerless Tour
+Saint-Jacques, at the first sight of which the most indifferent exclaim
+with delight over so rare a vision of grace and lace-like beauty, over
+long slender windows delicately foliated, over traceries of stone
+like petrified festoons, and an ensemble so suggestive of some dainty
+ivory-carving a million times enlarged. With a glimpse of the round
+pointed towers of the dread Conciergerie comes something of the horror
+of the days of the Terror, and one fancies ghastly forms beckoning him
+at the windows with white, frightened faces and hanging hair and eyes
+with hideous rings, and delicate praying hands upheld to passers-by,
+and iron bars clutched by the little white fingers of Marie Antoinette
+and her court.
+
+From such a gruesome fancy it is a relief to turn and look down on
+the dark rippling Seine and watch the wavy ribbons of light swim
+quiveringly out from the bridge lamps. And there in the cool of their
+stone wharves, still panting and perspiring from the violent exertions
+of the earlier evening, lie the fat little open-deck steamers that
+haul the lovers home. For many a happy pair this day has been dining
+deliciously _à deux_ under the gay terrace awnings of one or another
+of the romantic, flower-embowered inns that overlook the river all the
+way from Charenton to gray old Argenteuil, where Héloïse in her nunnery
+fought her losing fight against love and the memory of Abélard. Some of
+these steamers appear alarmingly apoplectic, so that one wonders how
+they have managed to wheeze safely under all those low arches with the
+garlanded “N’s” and past so many formidable buttresses all sculptured
+cap-a-pie.
+
+If now you turn and look upward and about you, lo! the heaped
+and cluttered roofs of Paris—the most fantastic and romantic of
+spectacles! It is singular, almost startling, to see how they stare
+down as though to study you, and with apparently as much curious
+intentness and dark suspicion as you do them. There must be whole
+volumes of stories to each of them. Out of the ponderous Mansard roofs
+impudent, leering little dormer windows wink down and squint up, each
+with his rakish peaked roof like a jockey cap over one ear. And up
+above even them are whole groves of blackened chimney-stacks leaning
+all askew, like barricades for _sansculottes_. You look expectantly to
+see miserable white Pierrot come forth, guitar in hand, and sing sadly
+of Colombine to the pallid moon.
+
+Suddenly, to the right, the lift of a cloud unveils the bronze dome of
+the solemn Hôtel des Invalides, and your heart beats high with thoughts
+of the marvelous man who lies under it among his tattered battle-flags
+on a pavement inscribed with his victories. It is a sobering reflection
+that now in the darkness and stillness of that chamber the only eyes
+that are looking down on his porphyry sarcophagus are those of the
+bronze Christ that hangs on the cross in the little side chapel of the
+tomb.
+
+“Tout-Paris,” as smart society calls itself, spends the early summer
+at Trouville. All the most exclusive names of the two-volume Bottin
+are then inscribed in the hotel registers of this _recherché_ resort,
+nor are their owners to be looked for in town again until long after
+the derbies have reappeared in the hatters’ windows. But while Fashion
+is flirting on the beaches and betting on the little wooden horses of
+the Trouville Casino, what is left at home after “All Paris” has gone
+is quite sufficient to keep the boulevards lively. What walking-space
+remains is eagerly employed by the tens of thousands of visitors. One
+may not, therefore, see the fashionable show of winter, but he finds
+an acceptable substitute in the vivacious summer throngs with their
+perpetual atmosphere of Mardi Gras.
+
+As midnight wanes and the multitude waxes, it is amusing to speculate
+upon the scattered sources of the innumerable tiny streams that come
+gradually trickling in. The outlying attractions hold firmly enough up
+to this hour, but the magnet of the boulevards is strongest in the end.
+
+Montmartre, you may be sure, has been up to her old tricks. What “La
+Butte” has to learn about promiscuous entertaining may be classed among
+the negligible quantities. Somewhere in that honeycomb of _moulins_,
+_cabarets_, penny-shows, spectacles, _revues_, tiny theatres with
+sensational rococo façades and cafés with fantastic names dedicated to
+the riotous and the _risqué_, diversion is bound to be forthcoming for
+any amusement hunter _blasé_ with the usual. All the way down from the
+quaint little shops and crooked, cobble-stoned streets of the rustic
+upper region above the Moulin de la Galette to the blazing purlieus of
+the Place de Clichy and the Place Pigalle, there is always something
+on hand at midnight to amaze the neophyte. You may indulge or not, as
+inclination dictates, but you are pretty apt to be astonished, when you
+look at your watch, to see how long you have lingered. French ingenuity
+has lavished itself on every form of “attraction” from vaudeville and
+_bals publics_ to papier-maché establishments devoted to parodies of
+Heaven and Hell. The Boulevard de Clichy is the heart of “La Butte,”
+but the life it pumps along its arteries flows principally from one
+show to another. You may settle down on a bench under the trees, if
+you like, and resolve to view life only in the open in defiance of
+all the devils rampant in the neighborhood, but presently a flashing
+electric sign shrieks out an overlooked novelty and you find yourself
+saying, “Oh, well, since I am in Paris,” etc., etc., and off you go.
+
+The excuse of being in Paris covers a multitude of sins. To do as the
+Parisians do serves purposes rarely indulged by Parisians themselves.
+It must be because “everything is different here.” The frolicsome party
+in pink stockings who dropped her heel playfully on my bashful friend’s
+shoulder in an aside of the “quadrille” at the Moulin Rouge was merely
+turning one of the tricks that pass as _chic_ on Montmartre. She was of
+the assured and robust type that supports the “pyramid” in acrobatic
+feats, and the effect this had of dazing my friend arose rather from
+astonishment at its unconventionality than delight at its skill.
+This much I gathered when he seized my arm and hurried me away and
+eventually choked out, “Do you know, I have to keep saying to myself
+‘_Mullen, can this be you!_’” I think it was quite as hard on him at
+the Jardin de Paris, on the Champs-Élysées, when he saw beautifully
+gowned Paris girls step out of the crowd and go down the chutes on
+their shoulders, screaming with laughter, in a whirl of skirts and
+flash of lingerie. _In Paris!_ What American would dream of trying the
+tricks at home that he accomplishes with the ease of an expert on and
+under the tables of the “Rat Mort” or the Café Tabarin? It is a pretty
+problem as to whether he has saved up a special surplus of buoyancy for
+this city alone, or whether he has become infected with the natural
+high spirits of the Parisians and discovers too late that he is unable
+to control them as they do. The men who want “one more fling” before
+settling down head straight for Paris. It is probable if they could not
+get here that they would dispense with the fling altogether.
+
+Nor is the _Rive Gauche_ without its votaries at midnight. If the Latin
+Quarter stands for anything it is for unconventionality and comfortable
+enjoyment. If it is Thursday night the famous Bal Bullier is in full
+blast, and visitors are gazing down from the encircling boxes upon a
+jolly whirl of students in velvet coats and black slouch hats cutting
+fantastic capers in the quadrilles with their latest _bonnes_ and
+pretty models. Mimi and Musette are on the arms of Rudolphe and Marcel,
+“contented with little, happy with more.” Those so disposed need not
+long remain uncompanioned if they take a turn among the tables under
+the trees of the enclosed garden, where from any cozy corner a soft
+voice at any moment may ask you for a cigarette. With so auspicious a
+start there is no reason, if you are that sort, why you should not be
+swearing eternal devotion before you have finished one _citron glacé_.
+
+And no matter what night it is there is the old “Boul’ Miche’” as
+always, the resort and delight of artists and students from time
+immemorial. Would you sup, there are cafés, _tavernes_, _brasseries_,
+and restaurants of every price and description. You can have a _plat
+du jour_ of venerable beef and a quantity of _vin ordinaire_ for the
+modest outlay of one franc fifty; and your payment is received with
+many a cheery “Merci, monsieur,” and “S’il vous plaît,” and hearty “Bon
+soir,” and all the rest of that captivating civility that prevails to
+the last corner of the city. It is perhaps more agreeable to join the
+few remaining Henri Murger types among the crowds on the terraces of
+the Taverne du Panthéon or the Café Soufflot and listen to the vigorous
+talk that goes on over the little glasses of anisette and vermouth.
+It always seems to be that “hour of the apéritif” pronounced by
+Baudelaire,—
+
+    “L’heure sainte
+    de l’absinthe.”
+
+When the flower-women and peddlers become too numerous before
+the café and you are weary with declining nuts and nougats and
+ten-olives-for-two-sous, you may have a look into Les Noctambules or
+some other smoke-laden _cabaret_. The old-timers will grin behind
+their cigars at your “stung-again” expression when the polite _garçon_
+adds to the price of your first refreshment a franc or so for the
+_consommation_ of what was advertised as a free show; but shortly you
+get the run of things and settle down to attend the _chansonnier_,
+who is the ox-eyed gentleman in the long beard who strides up to the
+consumptive piano and pours forth an original and impassioned rhapsody
+to our old friend “Parfait Amour.”
+
+A little of this goes a long ways. When you have politely heard him
+through, you are apt to think better of the boulevards and to start
+bowing your way into the street. How still and deserted the familiar
+places appear where by day is so much life and stir—such bustling
+about of stout market-women in aprons, such racing of delivery-boys
+in white blouses shouldering trays and boxes, such a concourse of the
+little fruit wagons they push and the two-wheeled carts they haul! In
+the little wineshops that dot the side streets one sees the portly
+proprietors in shirt-sleeves behind the shining zinc bars polishing
+glasses and chatting with their patrons, who are workmen in jerseys
+and corduroy trousers and cabmen in glazed hats and whips in hand. The
+loveliness of the Luxembourg Gardens fairly shouts for appreciation.
+One could scarcely linger too long under the chestnuts and sycamores,
+among the puffing fountains, the bronzes and marbles, the beds of
+dahlias and geraniums, the oleanders of the Terrace and the great
+stone urns that drip petunias and purple clematis. As you cross the
+Seine by the old Pont Neuf and lean a moment on its broad balustrade,
+kindly thoughts go out to the garrets that may now be sheltering those
+pathetic stooping figures that bend all day above the long lines
+of book-shelves along the quays, and never buy, and you wish “good
+luck” to the good-natured book-sellers who never annoy them with
+importunities, but sit indulgently oblivious on the benches opposite
+and smoke their pipes and read their papers. So great a love of books
+will at least insure the old _habitués_ from ever being included in
+that dread toll of two-a-day that the Seine regularly pays into the
+Morgue.
+
+It is like getting home to be back on the boulevards,—gay, gleaming,
+brimming, and confused. The air hums with the incessant shuffle of feet
+on the asphalt sidewalks and the pounding of hoofs on the wood-paved
+streets. The eyes ache with trying to miss none of the faces that
+flash past or any of the good-fellowship that abounds. The bubbling
+current drifts one along by little kiosks all a-flutter with magazines
+and newspapers, by advertising pillars flaming in play-bills of many
+colors, by crowded curb benches, glowing shop windows and table-lined
+café fronts. The wise drop out where the red lights mark tobacco
+_bureaux_ and replenish their cigar-supply from government boxes with
+the prices stamped on them, rather than pay double for the same article
+in a restaurant later on. As you proceed to your favorite café it is
+immensely diverting to catch the glimpses of good cheer from those
+you pass. It is the same sort of thing in each case and yet somehow
+always different. On the red divans that extend around the rooms,
+with mirrors at their backs and _petits verres_ on marble-topped
+tables before them, one beholds formidable arrays of _bons vivants_,
+all taking their ease with as hearty a will as the very kings of
+Yvetot. Military men with red noses and white imperials, politicians
+with pervasive smiles, litterati bearded like the Assyrian kings and
+wearing rosettes of the Legion of Honor, fat merchants in fat diamonds,
+and pot-hatted _élégants_ who advertise smart tailors with as much
+exuberant grace as Roland himself. Happily for Paris, champagne is
+never out of season, and popping corks are held by many to make sweeter
+music than some of the orchestras in restaurant corners. The tide of
+life appears at flood. La Belle Ninette, of the Folies, _très fêtée
+et très admirée_, fares daintily on out-of-season delicacies, thanks
+to the enduring ardor of the _distingué_ Marquis opposite, and drops
+candied fruits with the prettiest air imaginable into the nervous
+mouth of her favorite poodle, who is himself rejoicing in a new silver
+collar set with garnets. _La séduisante_ Gabrielle, at an adjoining
+table, having once been a _blanchisseuse_ herself, appropriately excels
+in a toilette of cloudlike gossamer, and is quite the adored of the
+rheumatic old party beside her, who has probably been doting on the
+ballet for two generations. The talk is largely of _la belle_ this and
+_la belle_ that, of the latest display of extravagance, the most recent
+spectacle, the most promising plays for the fall, or the drollest
+freaks of the new fashions. One sees foreign faces from all quarters
+of the earth, as though it were some kind of international congress,
+with both hemispheres fully represented. Long accustomed to seeing
+the world without leaving home, nothing surprises Paris. A Chinese
+admiral, a Bedouin sheik, a Spitzbergen Eskimo, a lotus-lover of
+Tahiti, a Russian Grand Duke, or a millionaire hemp-grower of Yucatan
+pass practically unremarked. It would be a matter of no comment if
+“the Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.”
+_L’amour_ is the point of common contact, and even so one has little
+chance against a rich old _roué_ in the eyes of a _première danseuse_
+or a far-visioned _chanteuse_ of the Marigny. Business flourishes in
+the cafés. The harried waiters are kept bowing right and left and hurry
+off crying “tout de suite.” Each open door sends out its vision of
+fluttering hands and shrugging shoulders and one hears an incessant
+rapid fire of “Bien!” “Dis donc!” “Écoutez!” “Mais non!” “Précisément!”
+“Allons!” “Oh, là là!”— and so on and on. At Maxim’s and the Olympia
+you would think there was a riot. Ice pails are as numerous as
+pulse-beats.
+
+When you reach your café at last, on the corner by the Opera House,
+perhaps, the ponderous _maître d’hôtel_ assigns you a _garçon_, whose
+name is doubtless François, Gustave, or Adolphe, and who is very
+businesslike in short jacket and white apron. To him goes your order
+for a _filet de bœuf_, or perhaps a _fricandeau_, or, better still, a
+sole with shrimp sauce; and as you await its preparation you think with
+satisfaction of the self-appreciative observation of Brillat-Savarin,
+“One eats everywhere; one dines only in Paris.”
+
+The life you then see about you is the usual thing here; to a
+stranger, novel and amusing; to a Parisian, altogether important and
+absorbing—an indispensable part of his existence. The setting is of
+soft carpets, palms, red velvet divans, chandeliers, and a crush of
+small, marble-topped tables. The place is crowded to the point of
+discomfort. A thin veil of smoke hangs over all. There are people in
+all kinds of street clothes and evening dress, ladies in opera cloaks
+and gentlemen in immaculate white waistcoats. There are ordinary
+individuals and fantastic “types”; ruddy, portly _bourgeois_ who shout
+“mon vieux” at each other and make a prodigious racket generally;
+and nervous old _beaux_ in _toupées_ who fancy themselves in drafts.
+Occupations vary. Ladies are dining on champagne and truffles; the
+man at your elbow is writing a letter; another is looking through the
+illustrated papers; another has called for ink and paper and is casting
+up the day’s expenditures; rubbers of dominoes and écarté are being
+played out; there is a continual running to the telephone-booths and
+you hear the muffled calls of “Allô!”—and all the time an orchestra is
+holding forth in the corner. The clatter of chairs and dishes and the
+confused rattle of conversation is amazing. Wit whets on wit. Everybody
+has an opinion and is anxious to back it. Politicians bang their
+fists on the tables and address one another as “citoyen.” Philosophers
+have it out, Cartesian against Hegelian. Poets quote from their latest
+lyrics and are tremendously applauded. Novelists dispose of rival books
+with a scornful shrug and a withering _mot_. And the playwright, by
+universal concession, is supreme cock of the walk.
+
+Presently you move a little out of all this and have a seat near the
+outer edge of the terrace, and begin to accumulate a pile of cups and
+saucers each with the price of the order burned in the bottom. So
+far as out of doors goes, you are now the audience and the passing
+crowd the show. The number has dwindled, but in characteristics it
+remains the same—sociable, good-humored, easy in manner, and quick
+in intelligence. It will be seen to differ from the night throngs
+of other cities not only in variety and exuberance, but in dramatic
+qualities as well. _Camelots_ rush up to you crying the latest editions
+of the evening papers, and suddenly, with furtive glances over their
+shoulders, thrust some questionable commodity under your nose and
+protest it is a bargain. Jolly parties sweep along, arm in arm, in
+lines that cross the sidewalk from house to curb. Lady visitors, with
+eyes full of excited delight, pause for a wistful glance down Rue de
+la Paix where the establishments of famed milliners and modistes stand
+in gloom, little dreaming that they may be touching elbows this minute
+with the very _chefs des jupes_, _corsagères_, and _garnisseuses_ that
+they are to visit in the morning. _Chic_ grisettes trip smilingly by,
+who have dined frugally at Duval’s on chocolate and bread, to have
+another rose to their corsages. There are _blasé_ clubmen from the
+exclusive _cercles_ of Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées, and
+supercilious representatives of the American colony of the Boulevard
+Haussmann. Here comes D’Artagnan himself, capable and alert, arm in
+arm with blustering Porthos. Ragged _voyous_ with shifty looks run to
+open the carriage doors. From time to time there saunters by in cap and
+cape that model policeman, the affable and accommodating _sergent de
+ville_, and if you look around for a _camelot_ then, you will find him
+attending very strictly to business. And so the fascinating procession
+troops merrily by: roaring students from the Boul’ Miche’, black-eyed
+soldiers in shakos and baggy red trousers, members of the Institute,
+pretty working-girls who handle their skirts with the captivating
+grace of _comediennes_, the shapely dress-models they nickname
+“quails,” conceited _figurantes_ from the _cafés-concerts_, famous
+models, _cocottes_,—frail daughters of Lutetia,—with complexions
+like Italian sunsets, impudent _gamins_ chattering in unintelligible
+_argot_, _dilettanti_, _poseurs_, and the usual concomitants of beggars
+and thieves. What a jumble of happiness and misery! What an amazing
+spectacle, with the shimmer of silks and the glint of pearl ranged
+beside the mendicant in his rags!
+
+What a wealth of material, too, for the capable! One sees how Balzac
+found the best types of his “Human Comedy” on the boulevards; why
+Victor Hugo tramped them day and night and read shop signs by the hour
+in search for characters and the names to fit them; where Zola got the
+misery that he put between covers; where Molière secured impressions
+that he transplanted so effectually to the stage. How Dumas must have
+known these streets! And Flaubert and De Maupassant! Nor are they
+exhausted yet; or ever will be. Where the entire gamut of the emotions
+is so incessantly run as here, vital, human material can never be
+lacking.
+
+As one o’clock wears round, it is easy to distinguish a change in the
+appearance of the crowd.
+
+    “The tumult and the shouting dies,
+    The captains and the kings depart.”
+
+Something of that wan and forlorn look is beginning to appear that
+makes even these buildings themselves seem dejected and remorseful, by
+the time the street cleaners advance to flood the boulevards and the
+sky beyond Père-Lachaise is paling to dawn. The heart says, “Let’s keep
+it up”; the body says, “To bed.” And now, too, the crasser comedies of
+the fag end of the night receive their _premières_. Amaryllis has lost
+her Colin and laments loudly with Florian:—
+
+    “C’est mon ami,
+    Rendez-le moi;
+    J’ai son amour,
+    Il a ma foi.”
+
+Mlle. Fifi demands her carriage and bundles out into it, with the
+red-faced Baron hurrying after, carrying her amazing hat; and off
+they go toward the Champs-Élysées. A stag party of revelers hails a
+victoria and sinks limply onto its cushions; and they, too, head for
+the Champs-Élysées with one hanging onto the _cocher_ and reciting
+dramatically:—
+
+  “Au clair de la lune,
+  Mon ami Pierrot.”
+
+Everyone smiles, for they know whither, they are bound. For Pré
+Catelon, of course, in the Bois de Boulogne, where they will chase the
+ducks and chickens around the little farmyard and make speeches to the
+mild-eyed cows and recover themselves gradually on mugs of cold milk.
+
+Clearly, it is time to depart. One does not want the lees of this
+sparkling cup. A man is a fool to abuse his pleasures—though this
+may sound naïve at one o’clock in the morning. Go, while everything
+is still charming and delightful. The seasoned _boulevardier_ can do
+it, for he has a viewpoint that is all his own; it is by no means that
+of France, nor yet that of Paris by day, but of Paris by night—_his_
+Paris. It is opportunism applied to society. Not the mad, reckless
+_après-moi-le-déluge_ folly rout of the late Louises, but rather a
+conception of the importance of few things and the inconsequence of
+many. He sings with Villon: “Where are the snows of yester-year?” He
+searches the classics, and has “Carpe Diem” framed. He skims Holy Writ
+and puts his finger on “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
+“Life is poetry,” quoth he, “in spite of a limping line here and there!
+Why fuss over Waterloo, or the Place de Grève, or the guillotine, or
+the tumbrils that rattled up the Rue Royale? The present alone is ours;
+enjoy it to the uttermost! Life is beautiful and of the moment. Lights
+are sparkling. Fountains are splashing. The night is delicious with
+fragrance and enchanting with music and laughter. Join me!” he cries.
+“I raise my glass: _To the lilies of France and the Bright Eyes of the
+Daughters of Paris!_”
+
+
+THE END
+
+  The Riverside Press
+  CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
+  U. S. A.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROUND THE CLOCK IN
+EUROPE ***
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+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Around the clock in Europe, by Charles Fish Howell</p>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Around the clock in Europe</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>A travel sequence</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Charles Fish Howell</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 26, 2023 [eBook #71043]</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
+  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Credits: Fiona Holmes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</p>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROUND THE CLOCK IN EUROPE ***</div>
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h2>Transcriber’s Note</h2>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_76">Page 76</a>&#8212;conquerers changed to <strong>conquerors</strong></p>
+<p><a href="#Page_171">Page 171</a>&#8212;expecially changed to <strong>especially</strong></p>
+<p><a href="#Page_226">Page 226</a>&#8212;Funicolà changed to <strong>Funiculà</strong></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="cover">
+ <img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" width="1810" height="2560">
+</div>
+
+<h1>AROUND THE CLOCK IN EUROPE </h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_004">
+<img src="images/i_004.jpg" alt="" width="389" height="600">
+<p class="caption center p80">PIAZZA SAN MARCO FROM THE GRAND CANAL <em>Page <a href="#Page_305">305</a></em></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="p4"></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_title">
+<img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" width="348" height="600">
+</div>
+
+<p class="p4"></p>
+
+<div class="title-page">
+<p class="center p120">  AROUND THE CLOCK IN
+    EUROPE</p>
+
+<p class="p4"></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="gothic">A Travel-Sequence</span></p>
+<p class="p4"></p>
+
+<p class="center p80">    BY</p>
+
+<p class="center p100">    CHARLES FISH HOWELL</p>
+
+<p class="center p80">    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY<br>
+    HAROLD FIELD KELLOGG</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_005">
+<img src="images/i_005.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="130">
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">    BOSTON AND NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="center">    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</p>
+
+<p class="p2"></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="gothic">The Riverside Press Cambridge</span></p>
+<p class="p2"></p>
+
+<p class="center">    1912
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">    COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CHARLES FISH HOWELL</p>
+
+<p class="center">    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p>
+
+<p class="center">    <em>Published October 1912</em>
+</p>
+
+<p class="p4"></p>
+<hr class="tb x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center">    TO</p>
+
+<p class="center">    HELEN EDITH HOWELL</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><em>Sweet the memory is to me</em></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><em>Of a land beyond the sea.</em></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><span class="smcap">Longfellow.</span></div>
+  </div>
+  </div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[ix]</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center">IN EXPLANATION</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> pages that follow should best account for themselves, of course,
+but for the satisfaction of those who very properly require some
+general conception of a project before definitely entering upon it, the
+author begs to say that he has here sought to visualize to the reader
+the appearance and the life of these cities at the hours indicated,
+and to preserve, as well, the distinctive atmosphere of each. He has
+endeavored to catch and present faithful impressions of the streets,
+their kaleidoscopic animation, and the activities and characteristics
+of the people; to touch the pen-pictures with a light overwash of the
+racial and national peculiarities that distinguish each, and to invest
+them with what insight, sympathy, and enthusiasm he is capable of. It
+is “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase,” as Mr. Howells has
+so aptly described the process and as he himself has so wonderfully
+exemplified it. A formidable undertaking? Indeed, yes; but there is the
+dictum of Mr. Browning that the purpose swells the account.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, are impressionistic sketches. They are of the moment only.
+It has been sought, most of all, to give them just that character. They
+have been written as reflecting the probable observations and emotions
+of visitors of normal enthusiasm during these hours and in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[x]</span> these
+environs. Under such conditions, it is well to remember, every active
+mind has its sudden, drifting excursions afield; something in the
+visible, present surroundings whimsically invokes the subtle genii of
+Memory and Imagination, and one is whisked off in a breath, and without
+rhyme or reason, to the most ultimate and alluring Isles of Thought.
+These swift and scarcely accountable flights are the common experience
+of all travelers, and the author has felt it to be a part of his task
+to take proper cognizance of them.</p>
+
+<p>Travel is generally conceded to be one of the most informing and
+diverting of engagements, and to gain in both particulars in
+proportion to the favorableness of the conditions under which it is
+prosecuted. It is, therefore, a satisfaction to be in position to
+afford readers advantages scarcely obtainable elsewhere. Discarding
+conventions of time and space, the author undertakes to give them
+twelve <em>consecutive</em> happy hours in Europe,—once around the
+clock,—always endeavoring to secure the most favorable union of hour
+and place. And though there may be dissent from his judgment concerning
+the superiority of this combination or that, there can hardly be two
+opinions as to the perfection of the transportation facilities. The
+latter eliminate time and space, and convey the reader from city to
+city and from point to point, with no discomfort or inconvenience
+whatever, and without the loss of so much as a tick of the watch.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[xi]</span></p>
+
+<p>With foot in the stirrup, it may be added that there has been an
+earnest desire to entertain those whom circumstances have hitherto kept
+at home, as also to revive to memory golden recollections for travelers
+who have already passed along these pleasant ways. What is here offered
+is just a new portfolio of sketches from Nature; the touch of another
+but reverent hand on the old and well-loved scenes. Surely there can be
+no better reason for any book than a desire to share with others the
+happiness experienced by</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">The Author</span>.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[xii]</span></p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class="toc">
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl">EDINBURGH—<span class="allsmcap">1 P.M. TO 2 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">ANTWERP—<span class="allsmcap">2 P.M. TO 3 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">ROME—<span class="allsmcap">3 P.M. TO 4 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">PRAGUE—<span class="allsmcap">4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">SCHEVENINGEN—<span class="allsmcap">5 P.M. TO 6 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">BERLIN—<span class="allsmcap">6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">LONDON—<span class="allsmcap">7 P.M. TO 8 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">NAPLES—<span class="allsmcap">8 P.M. TO 9 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">HEIDELBERG—<span class="allsmcap">9 P.M. TO 10 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">INTERLAKEN—<span class="allsmcap">10 P.M. TO 11 P.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">VENICE—<span class="allsmcap">11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl">PARIS—<span class="allsmcap">MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M.</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[xv]</span>
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class="toi">
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">Piazza San Marco from the Grand Canal</span> <a href="#Page_305">(page 305)</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr"> <a href="#i_004"><em>Frontispiece</em></a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Edinburgh Castle</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">Edinburgh, Princes Street</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Whole Family</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">Antwerp, from the Scheldt</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">In the Gardens of the Vatican</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Rome, The Piazza di Spagna</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">The Pulverturm</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Prague, The Castle from the Old Bridge</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Dutch Girls are always Knitting</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Scheveningen Beach</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">In the Sieges-Allée</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Berlin, Unter den Linden</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">Trafalgar Square</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">London, St. Paul’s from under Waterloo Bridge</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Margherita</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Bay of Naples<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</span></span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Heidelberg Student</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Heidelberg, From the Castle Terrace</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Down from the Mountain</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Interlaken, On the Hotel Lawn</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Piazza San Marco</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">Venice, Grand Canal from the Piazzetta</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Gargoyle of Notre Dame</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+  <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Paris, On the Boulevard</span></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_019">
+<img src="images/i_019.jpg" alt="" width="334" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="AROUND_THE_CLOCK">AROUND THE CLOCK</h2>
+
+<p class ="center">IN EUROPE</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="EDINBURGH">EDINBURGH</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">1 P.M. TO 2 P.M.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Up</span> there on the gusty heights of Edinburgh no one ever inquires the
+time at one o’clock in the afternoon. Precisely at the second, a ball
+flutters to the top of the Nelson flagstaff on Calton Hill and a
+cannon booms from a battery at Castle Rock; and watches are then set
+by merchants all over town, by shepherds on the shaggy Pentland Hills,
+and sailors on ships in the lee of Leith. And one o’clock is the very
+best time Edinburgh could have fixed upon to encourage her people to
+look up and about and behold her at her finest. It is luncheon-hour,
+and when the sun is kindly, “Auld Reekie” is just about as garish and
+stimulating as it is possible for a town of such dignified traditions
+and questionable climate ever to become. The air freshens in from
+blustering Leith, and fair Princes Street wears its most beguiling
+smiles. One thrills with the joy of being alive in so brave and bonny
+a world, with the bluebells and heather of Old Scotland about him and
+this town of song and story at his feet. He gazes at the cheerful
+crowds moving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span> leisurely along the valley gardens elegant with statues
+and flowered lawns, or across at the frowzy heads in rickety garret
+windows away up among the palsied gables of ancient High Street, and
+he knows that over there is the Canongate of stern tradition and the
+storied St. Giles’ and black Holyrood, and beyond them he sees the
+Salisbury Crags, a gaunt palisade halfway up to lofty Arthur’s Seat. He
+has just arrived, perhaps, with the glow on his face of all he has read
+and heard of this famed place, and the bugles are singing on Castle
+Hill and the Edinburgh bells are ringing.</p>
+
+<p>There is little opportunity for preliminary impressions while
+arriving. The train darts up a valley before you have finished with
+the suburban cottages of the laboring men, and with an ultimate shriek
+of relief abruptly dives into its cave, as it were, and deposits you
+unceremoniously in the esplanaded Waverley Station, with flowered
+walks above and a market just at hand. The wise traveler gathers up
+his luggage and fares eagerly forth to Princes Street, as a matter
+of course. There, on the way to his hotel, he finds a good part of
+Edinburgh idling pleasantly after luncheon, for Princes Street is
+the dear delight of the loiterer be he old or young, Robin or Jean.
+He is studied as he passes through the crowds, curiously, smilingly,
+critically, tolerantly. His clothing may excite disapproval, his
+baggage amusement, and his intentions speculation. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>Curiosity “takes
+the air” at noon. Arrived in a moment at a Princes Street hotel and
+duly registered, he is handed a curious disk of white cardboard the
+size of an after-dinner coffee-cup’s top, upon which is blazoned the
+number of the room to which he has just been assigned. Preceded by a
+chambermaid gowned in black and aproned in white and followed by a
+porter with his traps, he advances grandly to his quarters, according
+to the tag, and hurries to a window for his first keen impression of
+the “Modern Athens.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_023">
+<img src="images/i_023.jpg" alt="" width="408" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">EDINBURGH, PRINCES STREET</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Just why it should be called an “Athens” would scarcely be apparent
+from a Princes Street hotel window. The literary rights to the title
+might be conceded, but the stranger will need to view the town from
+some neighboring height to appreciate the physical similarity between
+the two cities and to observe the suggestiveness of the Castle and the
+reminder of the Acropolis in the “ruin”-crowned summit of Calton Hill.
+What he does see from his window is sufficiently inspiring. At his feet
+stretches Princes Street which he has heard called the finest avenue in
+Europe, and along its other side terraces of vivid turf, set with shade
+trees and statues and flowered walks, drop down in graceful steps to
+the lawns in the bottom of the valley that was once the North Loch’s
+basin and where now, to Edinburgh’s chagrin, are the railroad tracks.
+Across these gardens vaults a boulevard styled “The Mound,” and on
+their farther side is the gray old Castle on its precipitous crag with
+a soft sweep of green braes at its base. On<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span> the Castle side of the
+valley the far-famed High Street turns the venerable backs of its tall,
+tottering, weather-blackened rookeries on the frivolity of Princes
+Street, and scornfully gives its laundry to the breeze in hundreds of
+heaped and crooked gable-windows. Centuries before any of us were born
+those fantastic and whimsical family nests were lined up as we see them
+to-day. One could fancy them a row of colossal, prehistoric giraffes
+with their tails all our way, nibbling imaginary tree-tops on High
+Street. The stranger will lean out of his window and look down Princes
+Street and start with delight to see that “sublimest monument to a
+literary genius,” the lace-like Gothic spire to Scott, where, under a
+springing canopy of arches and aspiring needles studded with statues of
+the immortal characters he created, sits the great Sir Walter himself
+in snowy Carrara, with his favorite hound at his feet. And one’s heart
+warms to this romantic Edinburgh so beloved of him and of the fiery
+Burns, the passionate Chalmers, the gentle Allan Ramsay, and Jeffrey
+of the brilliant “far-darting” criticisms. Here, in their time, mused
+Robert Fergusson and David Livingstone and Smollett and Hume and
+Goldsmith and De Quincey and “Kit North” and Carlyle; and but yesterday
+has added the name of Stevenson, not the least loved of them all. What
+inspiration this region must have kindled to have given to Art such
+sons as Gordon, Drummond, Nasmyth, Wilkie, Raeburn,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span> and Faed! Could
+the roster of old Greyfriars Burying-Ground be called, one would marvel
+at the number of great names there memorialized that are familiar and
+beloved to the remotest, out-of-the-way corners of the earth. And so
+the new arrival closes his window more slowly than he raised it and
+steals reverently down into the street to meet this Edinburgh face to
+face.</p>
+
+<p>You might think, to hear Americans talk at home, that every other
+Edinburgh man carries a dirk or a claymore under a tartan and wears a
+ferocious red beard like the pictures of Rob Roy; that people go about
+in plaid shawls and tam o’shanters, and that most society functions end
+up with a Highland fling. One may see at wayside railroad stations,
+as in our own country, wild, hair-blown lassies with flaming cheeks
+running in from the hills to have a look at the train; but with some
+such mild exception, if it is one, the Scots on their native heath
+are, of course, precisely what we are used to elsewhere. Types apart,
+the man of the streets of Edinburgh looks entirely familiar—shrewd
+and combative, rugged and perhaps hard, slouchy and indifferent in
+the matter of dress, hobnailed and be-capped. There is something
+tremendously genuine and wholesome about him. He is merry and brisk
+and lively, often; but you would not call him ever quite gay—at least
+with that sparkle that dances in the eyes you look into on the Paris
+boulevards. You could scarcely, for instance, imagine a Scotchman
+singing a barcarolle!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span> Best of all they are honest and sincere, and
+one takes to them at once. Here are the lassies and laddies you have
+long sung about, fresh-faced and debonair. Cheerful fearlessness shines
+out of their frank blue eyes, and they look to dare all things and be
+utterly unafraid. The square foreheads of the older men, the austere
+cheek bones and strong chins, unscroll history to the observer and make
+him think of savage broils along the border, of fierce finish-fights
+throughout the wild Highlands, and of the deathless Grays of Waterloo.
+You may defeat a Scotchman, but he will never admit it, and if he
+is all-Scotch he will not even know it. They are brave, witty, and
+devoted, and many a person will take issue with Swift for finding their
+conversation “hardly tolerable,” and with Lamb for pronouncing their
+“tediousness provoking” and for giving them up in despair of ever
+learning to like them.</p>
+
+<p>The new arrival plunges into Princes Street, accepts inspection
+good-naturedly, and soon feels entirely at home. He may even find the
+day bright and cheerful, in spite of apprehension over the dictum
+of Stevenson that this climate is “the vilest under heaven.” The
+street is quite unusual—one side a terraced valley, the other a
+splendid line of shops, clubs, and hotels, with gay awnings. Paris
+and London novelties fill the windows. A throng of vehicles bustles
+up and down—motor-busses, double-decked trolley cars, taxi-cabs,
+hired Victorias, two-wheeled carts, brewery wagons, station<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> lorries,
+tourists’ <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chars-à-bancs</i> with drivers in scarlet liveries,
+private carriages and bicycles. The stream of people on either pavement
+is of the holiday cheeriness that comes with the luncheon recess from
+office and shop, though here and there one may occasionally discover
+some “sour-looking female in bombazine” that recalls R. L. S.’s “Mrs.
+McRankin” and who appears as ready as she to inquire whether we
+attend to our “releegion.” The restaurants are plying a brisk trade,
+contenting their tarrying guests, speeding the parting and hailing
+the coming. Whole coveys of pretty shop-girls with brilliant cheeks,
+wholesome and vivacious, come chattering and laughing out of tea- and
+luncheon-rooms and flutter back to work with frequent enthusiastic
+stops before alluring windows. Workmen in tweed caps and clerks in
+straw hats pass by, to or from their occupations, and always with
+lingering looks toward the Princes Street Gardens, so that one can
+accurately guess whether they are coming from or going to office by
+applying the reliable Shakespearean formula—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Love goes to Love as schoolboys from their books,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And Love from Love to school with heavy looks.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The air is rhythmic with the up-and-down slur of this speech of
+“aye” and “na.” Curious faces flash past. Threadbare lawyers argue
+pompously as they saunter back arm in arm toward Parliament Close,
+and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span> ruddy-cheeked girls, by contrast, seem so distracting that a
+foreigner rages at the sentiment that “kissing is out of season when
+the gorse is out of bloom.” Occasionally, even at so early an hour,
+there is evidence of the passion for drink. “Willie brew’d a peck o’
+maut” flashes to mind, and one fancies the unsteady ones are trying
+to hum, “We are na fou, we’re no that fou, but just a drappie in our
+ee.” When night comes on, sober men in the streets have reason to
+frown censoriously; and if it be a Saturday night, they may even feel
+lonesome.</p>
+
+<p>A passing regiment is a welcome interruption and a brave spectacle.
+It is always hailed with shouts of joy. All Edinburgh turns in its
+bed Sunday mornings at nine to see the Black Watch come out from the
+Castle for “church parade” at St. Giles’s. Nothing stirs Princes Street
+on any week day like a military display. It is a thrilling moment to
+a stranger, perhaps, when he has his first glimpse of a young Tommy
+Atkins, and he stops stock-still to take in the bright scarlet,
+tailless jacket, the tight trousers, the “pill-box” perilously cocked
+over an ear, and the inevitable “swagger cane” with which he slaps his
+leg as he braves it along. But what is that to the passing of a company
+of Highlanders! Along they come, kilts and plaids, sporrans swinging,
+claymores rattling, and jolly Glengarry bonnets poised rakishly to the
+falling point. Ten pipers are droning and three drummers are pounding;
+and one watches, as they pass, for the holly sprig, or what-not, they
+wear in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> their bonnets as a badge of the clan. The best show is made by
+the King’s Highlanders from up Balmoral way; and splendid they are in
+royal Stuart tartan, with the oak leaf and thistle in their bonnets and
+each man carrying a Lochaber axe. If there is anything more inspiriting
+than cheery bagpipe music at such a time, no one to laugh foolishly at
+it and every one to love it, and the men stepping proudly and the crowd
+applauding,—I, for one, do not know it.</p>
+
+<p>Keenness of impressions, as we all know, may depend on the most trivial
+circumstances of time and place. I recall, for example, a sharp and
+thrilling musical experience in Scotland, with the instrument nothing
+more than the despised and humble mouth-organ. Perhaps it was the
+mood, perhaps the setting, perhaps the unexpectedness of it; there
+was so little and yet so much. At all events, I shall not soon forget
+the sparkle and stir of “The British Grenadiers” as it ripped the
+sharp night air of quiet Melrose to the approach of three English
+soldiers, one with the mouth-organ and the others whistling in time as
+they marched briskly along. I shall always remember the rhythmic beat
+of their feet as they swung across the murky, deserted square, the
+loudness, the thrill, and the lilt of that historic melody, and the
+flicker of a lamp in a window here and there and the pleasant sting of
+the keen night air.</p>
+
+<p>There is no better place for a stranger to “get his bearings” in
+Edinburgh than out on that valley-spanning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span> boulevard they call “The
+Mound.” He then has the Old Town to one side and the New Town to the
+other, and on opposite corners, as if to maintain the balance, the
+Castle and Calton Hill. He also takes note of the several bridges
+that clamp the town together, as it were; and he may look down into
+the gardens before him and watch the children playing as far as the
+promenade-covered Waverley Station, or he may turn and look the other
+way and see quite as many more all the way along the pleasant green to
+the old battle-scarred West Kirk of St. Cuthbert’s where De Quincey
+lies in his quiet grave. Thus he will find himself of a sunny afternoon
+between the pleasant horns of a most agreeable dilemma. He must choose
+whether to spend his first hour in the New Town or the Old. If he
+remembers what Ruskin said he will fly from the New; but then he may go
+there, after all, if he recalls the opinion of the old skipper cited
+by Stevenson, whose most radiant conception of Paradise was “the New
+Town of Edinburgh, with the wind the matter of a point free.” He must
+decide whether his present inclination is for latter-day city features,
+like conventional streets lined with substantial gray stone buildings
+looking all very much alike, for the fashionables of Charlotte Square
+and Moray Place and the bankers and brokers of St. Andrew Square, or
+the historic ground of crowded old High Street and the Castle and
+Holyrood. He would find in the New Town some old places, too, for
+it is one hundred and fifty years old,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> and there are the literary
+associations of the last century and the house on Castle Street where
+Scott lived more than a quarter-century—“poor No. 39,” as he called it
+in his Journal—and wrote the early Waverley Novels, and rejoiced along
+with his mystified friends in the tremendous success of “The Great
+Unknown.” He would find it a rapidly modernizing city; no longer may
+the children salute the lamplighter on his nightly rounds with “Leerie,
+Leerie, licht the lamps!” But he would find the most interesting things
+there the oldest things, and they all in the Antiquarian Museum—and
+what a show! John Knox’s pulpit, the banners of the Covenanters, the
+“thumbikins” that “aided” confession and the guillotine “Maiden” that
+rewarded it, the pistols Robert Burns used as an exciseman, and the
+sea-chest and cocoanut cup of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson
+Crusoe; and there, too, is Bonnie Prince Charlie’s blue ribbon of
+the Garter and the ring Flora Macdonald gave him when they parted.
+If historic paraphernalia is alluring, however, the scenes of its
+associations are much more so; and our friend would doubtless hesitate
+no longer, but turn to the Old Town and trudge up the steep way to the
+Castle.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“You tak’ the high road</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And I’ll tak’ the low road,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And I’ll get to Scotland afore ye”;—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and if the song had kept to geography it would probably have added,
+“And we’ll meet at the bonny Castle o’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> Auld Reekie.” Such, at least,
+has been a Scotch custom for thirteen hundred years; and with every
+reason. Through the long and cruel centuries it has gathered to
+its flinty gray bosom memories of every possible phase of national
+mutation, desperate or glorious, gloomy or gay. One approaches it with
+awe. So long has it gripped the summit of that impregnable rock, half
+a thousand feet sheer on three of its sides, that it has blended into
+the life and color of its foundations, like a huge chameleon, until one
+could scarcely say where rock leaves off and castle begins. A stern and
+pitiless object, tolerating only here and there a grassy crevice at its
+base, and a clinging tree or two. In the great “historic mile” of High
+Street, lifting gradually from Holyrood to this rugged elevation, one
+feels the illusion of an enormous scornful finger extended dramatically
+westward toward the traditional rival, Glasgow. There is no need to
+see Highland regiments drilling on its broad esplanade, or to enter
+its sally-port or penetrate the dungeons in its rocky depths to have
+confidence that the royal regalia of “The Honours of Scotland” are safe
+enough here, on the red cushions in their iron cage. One enters, and
+there settles upon him a feeling of sharing in every grim tradition
+since the doughty days “when gude King Robert rang.” It is not a visit;
+it is an initiation.</p>
+
+<p>Quite worthy of this savage stronghold is the inspiring outlook from
+its parapets over hills and rivers and storied glens. One turns
+impatiently from “Mons<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span> Meg,” which may have been a big gun in some
+past day of little ones, to gaze afar over the carse of Stirling
+and the trailing silver links of the Forth to where the snow shines
+in the clefts of Ben Ledi, or out over the Pentland Hills where the
+“Sweet Singers” awaited the Judgment. The sportsman will think of
+the grouse-shooting at Loch Earn; the sentimentalist will reflect
+that when night settles over Aberdeenshire the pipers will strike
+up their strathspeys and there will be Scotch reels by torchlight.
+Scotland seems unrolled at your feet and Scottish songs rush to mind
+until you fairly bound the region in verse and story: To the north
+and northwest, “Bonnie Dundee,” the glens of “Clan Alpine’s warriors
+true,” Bannockburn and “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” and “The Banks
+of Allan Water”; to the north and east, the Firth of Forth where the
+fishwives’ “puir fellows darkle as they face the billows”; to the west
+and southwest, “The banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,” “Tam o’Shanter’s”
+land, “Sweet Afton” and “Bonnie Loch Leven” whence “the Campbells are
+comin’”; and to the south, “The braes of Yarrow,” “Norham’s castled
+steep, Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep, and Cheviot’s mountains
+lone,” and, most sung of all, “The Border”:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“England shall, many a day, tell of the bloody fray</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">When the blue bonnets came over the border.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The afternoon sun rests brightly on the pretty glen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> in the foreground
+where lie the dismal, bat-flown ruins of Rosslyn Castle, loopholed for
+archers and shadowed in ancient yews that have overhung the Esk for
+a thousand years, and on the delicate chapel of stone-lace where the
+barons of Rosslyn await the Judgment in full armor with finger-tips
+joined in prayer. And there, too, are the cool, dark thickets of
+Hawthornden, recalling the ever-popular</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Gang down the burn, Davy Love,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And I will follow thee.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>One cannot forbear a smile as he surveys the noble bridge that spans
+the Forth and recalls the insistent pride of Edinburgh in the same.
+Here is an achievement over which all visitors are expected to exclaim
+in amazement—and engineers, I presume, invariably do. On this point
+your Edinburgh man is immovable. He scorns to elaborate and he will not
+descend to eulogy. He merely indicates it with a reverent inclination
+of the head, and turns and looks you in the eye; you are supposed to do
+the rest. Personally, while I give the great structure its dues, which
+are many, I like what flows under it more.</p>
+
+<p>And there is one thing about the Forth that Edinburgh people never
+forget, nor do the visitors who find it out: “Caller herrin’!” It
+must have taxed the resources of even such a genius as Lady Nairne,
+whose home one may see if he looks beyond Holyrood to the villas
+of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span> Duddingston, to have written two such dissimilar songs as the
+heart-melting “Land o’ the Leal” and the cheery “Caller Herrin’.”
+There’s the king of all marketing songs. It really compels one to
+think with despair of what a dreary mockery life would be were this,
+of all harvests, to fail. For love of that song I could defend the
+Forth herring against all competitors whatsoever. Loch Fyne herring?
+Fair fish, yes; but really, now, you would hardly say they have that
+racy flavor we get in the Forth article. Caller salmon? Oh, pshaw, you
+are from Glasgow; you have been swearing by caller salmon for five
+hundred years; have it on your coat of arms; used to draw it on legal
+papers as other people do seals;—but, honestly, have you ever seen a
+salmon in the Clyde, anywhere near Glasgow, in all your life? And if
+you did, would you eat it? Certainly not! So “give over,” as they say
+in England. Certainly there never was such pathos and unction devoted
+to just such a subject. And the music, too! How it compels you with its
+appealing monotones and rebukes you with the brave huckster cries on
+high F! So when you are passing near Waverley Market and encounter one
+of the picturesque Scandinavian fishwives, who has trudged in with her
+“woven willow” from her little stone house at Newhaven with the patched
+roof and quaint fore-stairs, unless you are willing to buy a herring
+then and there and carry it around in your pocket, run for your life
+before she starts singing:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“When ye were sleeping on your pillows,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Darkling as they face the billows,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A’ to fill our woven willows!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Wha’ll buy caller herrin’?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">They’re bonnie fish and halesome farin’;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Buy my caller herrin’,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">New drawn frae the Forth.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>To stroll down High Street is to unscroll Scottish history and survey
+Edinburgh of to-day at one and the same time. “Hie-gait,” as the old
+fellows still occasionally call it, is the “historic mile” <em>par
+excellence</em> of Scotland. In its independent fashion it assumes new
+names as it meanders along, first Castle Hill, then Lawnmarket, then
+High Street, and finally Canongate. Even the afternoon sun ventures
+guardedly among the nest of tall, gaunt <em>lands</em> that scowl at each
+other across its war-worn way. Bleak and glum to the peaked and gabled
+roofs, eight and ten stories above the sidewalk, they have resisted
+dry rot by a miracle of mortar and still hang together, doubtless
+to their own amazement, huddling a perfect enmeshment of tiny homes
+like some ingenious nest of boxes. It would be hard to imagine more
+drear and rickety domiciles or any more nervously overshadowed with an
+impending doom of dissolution. One looks anxiously about to see some
+venerable veteran give it up with a dismal, weary groan and collapse
+in a vast huddle of domestic wreckage. Fancy living<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span> where you have to
+scale breakneck stairs to a dizzy height and then reach your remote
+eyrie by a trembling gangway over an air well! The <em>closes</em> or
+<em>wynds</em> that are engulfed among these flat-chested ancients are
+equally surprising. One passes in from the street through a dirty
+entrance with a worn stone sill and a rudely carven doorhead inscribed
+with Scriptural and moral injunctions, and finds himself in an inner
+court fronted by dirty doors and palsied windows full of frowzy
+women, a cobbled pavement littered with refuse and a patch of sky
+half-hidden by fragments of laundry. And, mind you, these retreats are
+not without pride of tradition; many of them have entertained riches
+and royalty—but that was not last week. Lady Jane Grey was once
+hidden in famous White Horse Close, which must have fallen further
+than Lucifer to reach its present condition. Douglas Tavern was in
+one of them, where Burns and his brethren of the “Crochallan Club”
+were wont to revel with “Rattlin’, roarin’ Willie, and amang guid
+companie.” Legends, of course, abound. There was the case of the two
+stubborn sisters who quarreled one night and never spoke to each other
+again, though they lived the remainder of their lives together in the
+selfsame room. There’s Scotch persistence! Deacon Brodie was another
+instance, the “Raffles” of his time. He it was who used to ply his
+nefarious trade by night on the friends who knew him by day as a highly
+respectable cabinet-worker; and if you look furtively aloft at some
+dusty,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span> closed shutter you can fancy the dark lantern glowing and the
+file rasping and the black mask drawn to his chin. Happily, they hanged
+him eventually; and, singularly enough, on the very gallows for which
+he had himself invented a very superior drop.</p>
+
+<p>A <em>close</em>, therefore, is so cheerless a spot that you could not
+well be worse off if you were to dive down the steep, wet steps of a
+neighboring slit of an alley and come out on the old Grassmarket of
+sinister renown where they hanged the Covenanters of the Moss Hags.
+As you gaze about on this ill-omened slum, once the home of many a
+prosperous and respected “free burgess,” but now given over to drovers
+and visiting farmers, and peer suspiciously up the adjoining West Port
+where Burke and Hare conducted their murders to get bodies for the
+surgeons, you are very apt to beat a hurried retreat and cry out with
+Claverhouse, “Come, open the West Port and let me gang free!”</p>
+
+<p>After one or two such explorations a stranger is content to pursue his
+investigation in the broad light of High Street. It seems delightful
+then to watch the barefooted boys in the street and the little girls
+in aprons and “pigtails.” And happily he may come across a shaggy
+steely-eyed old Highlander growling to a comrade in the guttural
+Gaelic, or perhaps a soldier in kilts and sporan. At this hour he
+will certainly see around Parliament Square groups of advocates and
+solicitors and “writers to the Signet,” and, it may be, some judge of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>
+the “Inner House” or “Outer House,” and possibly the Lord President
+himself. Otherwise he can take note of the uninviting shop-windows
+and the piles of merchandise on the sidewalks, and find entertainment
+in such unfamiliar signs as “provisioners,” “spirit merchants,”
+“bootmakers,” “hairdressers,” etc., with prices set forth in shillings
+and pence, or rejoice in a hostelry with so unusual a name as “The
+Black Bull Lodgings for Travellers and Working Men.”</p>
+
+<p>There are pleasant surprises. For instance, you find in the cobbled
+pavement the outline of a heart—and you do not have to be told that
+you are standing on the site of the terrible old Tolbooth prison, at
+the Heart of Midlothian. And what rushes to mind and displaces all
+other associations if not the fine story Sir Walter gave us under that
+name! Here, then, the Porteous mob swarmed and raged in its struggle
+to burn this savage Bastile, and here they tried and condemned poor
+Effie Deans and locked her up while the faithful Jeanie turned heaven
+and earth to save her, and the heart of old David broke. “The Heart of
+Midlothian!” Why, it is like being a boy all over again!</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by this discovery, like a man who has just found a
+gold-piece, you keep a sharp lookout on the pavements, and presently
+comes a second reward in the shape of a brass tablet in the ground
+marking the last resting-place of stern John Knox. “There!” say you;
+“Dr. Johnson said he ought to be buried in the public<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span> road, and sure
+enough, he is!” What a man! He dared all things and feared nothing.
+How many a long discourse did Queen Mary herself supply him a topic
+for, and how often did he assail even her with personal rebukes and
+virulent public tirades! Thanks to the Free Church, his dwelling stands
+intact, farther down the street at the site of the Netherbow; and a
+fine specimen it is of sixteenth-century domestic Scotch architecture,
+with low ceilings and stairways scarce two feet wide—but, like its
+former austere tenant, narrow, cornery, and unpleasant. Implacable,
+unbending old John Knox! There is nothing in Browning more shuddering
+in imaginative flight than the quatrain:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“As if you had carried sour John Knox</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To the play-house at Paris, Vienna, or Munich,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Fastened him into a front-row box,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>One makes a long stop before the far-famed church of St. Giles, half
+a thousand years old and the battle-ground of warring creeds. Its
+crown-shaped tower top is one of the familiar landmarks of Edinburgh.
+Within you may study to heart’s content the grim barrel vaulting and
+massive Norman piers and the tattered Scottish flags in the nave, but
+there is scope for many an agreeable thought outside if one conjures
+up the little luckenbooth shops that once clustered between its
+buttresses, and imagines Allan Ramsay in his funny nightcap selling
+wigs, or “Jingling Geordie” Heriot, of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> “The Fortunes of Nigel,”
+gossiping with his friend King James <abbr title="the sixth">VI</abbr> over his jewelry counter. Nor
+would you forget Jenny Geddes and how she seized her stool in disgust
+when the Dean undertook to introduce the ritual, and let it fly at the
+good man’s head with the sizzling invective, “Deil colic the wame o’
+ye! Would ye say mass i’ my lug!”</p>
+
+<p>Old Tron Kirk, farther on, is still an active feature of Edinburgh
+life, and particularly on New Year’s Eve when the crowds rally here
+as the old year dies. Beyond it the Canongate extends itself in a
+rambling, happy-go-lucky fashion, lined with curious timber-fronted
+houses with “turnpike” stairs. It is like sitting down to “Humphrey
+Clinker” once more; or better still, perhaps, to the poems of
+Fergusson; and we smile at thoughts of the scowling, early-risen
+housewives of other days who would</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent12">“Wi’ glowering eye</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Their neighbours’ sma’est faults descry!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and fancy how the convivial revelers would foregather by night and</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent18">“sit fu’ snug,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent8">Or haddock lug.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But lingering along the Canongate is a negligible pleasure. There is
+nothing in the whole architectural world more jailish and pitiless
+than the gaunt Tolbooth and all its grim neighbors. It is as if the
+conception<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> of anything suggestive of beauty or ornamentation had been
+harshly repressed, and ugliness and the most naked utility sternly
+insisted upon. One may, however, if he is interested in slums, pause
+a moment to look down through the railings of the South Bridge on the
+screaming peddlers and flaunting shame of bedraggled Cowgate, and
+behold a district which stands to Edinburgh in the relative position
+of Rivington Street to New York, or Petticoat Lane to London, or
+Montmartre to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the Canongate, a few steps farther on, debouches
+unexpectedly, and with a sudden unpreparedness for the stranger, on the
+great open square before Holyrood. There it stands, black and dismal;
+more like a prison than a palace! The Abbey ruins, in the rear, supply
+all the atmosphere of romance that the eye will get here. But the eye
+is better left as a secondary aid in comprehending Holyrood; history
+and imagination do the work. Cowering sorrowfully in its gloomy hollow,
+it has the look of a moody, forsaken thing brooding over a neglectful
+world. Its memories are of the dead. Its sole companionship is in the
+mosses and grassy aisles of the crumbling Abbey chapel, where lie the
+bones of Scottish royalty that ruled and reveled here its allotted time
+and left scarce a memory behind. It was here they slew Rizzio as he
+dined with Queen Mary; and perhaps that is romance enough.</p>
+
+<p>The fumes and cobwebs of murky tradition dissipate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> in the keen,
+vigorous air of Calton Hill. Breezes from over the level shore-sands
+of Leith taste sharp of salt and excite bracing thoughts of the sea.
+Like a map, the whole environ of Edinburgh lies exposed from the
+Pentlands to the Firth. There is the steepled city, rising over its
+ridges and dropping down its valleys like billows of a troubled ocean,
+and there, too, is the enveloping sweep of suburbs dotted with villas
+or cross-thatched with streets of workingmen’s cottages, and farther
+still the Meadows and their archery grounds, “the furzy hills of Braid”
+and their golf links, Blackford Hill whence “Marmion” and his bard
+looked down on “mine own romantic town,” and, on the southern horizon,
+the heathery Pentlands, low and shaggy, with the kine that graze over
+them low and shaggy too. To the northward, away beyond the cricket
+greens of Inverleith Park, the blue Firth sparkles in the offing,
+dotted with fleet steamers and the white spread sails of stately ships
+laying courses for the Baltic. In the distance, over Leith, looms the
+tall lighthouse of the Inchcape Rock that Southey made famous with a
+ballad. Beyond the west end of the city a wavy blue line marks the
+course seaward of the bustling little Water of Leith, where “David
+Balfour” kept tryst with “Alan Breck,” and many a sturdy little “brig”
+leaps across it as it hurries along, “brimmed,” wrote Stevenson, “like
+a cup with sunshine and the song of birds.” Still farther to the
+westward, where the old Queens Ferry Coach Road<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span> appears as a faint
+white tracing, within many “a mile of Edinborough Town,” thin vapors
+of smoke rise from the chimneys of white cottages on peasant greens by
+brooksides; and one knows that the rowans there are white with bloom
+and the meadows flecked with daisies, and that bees are droning in the
+foxglove and blackbirds singing in the hawthorn.</p>
+
+<p>Calton Hill itself scarcely improves on acquaintance, but loses rather.
+Its meagre scattering of monuments would barely excite a passing
+interest were it not for their conspicuous location and that suggestion
+of the Athenian Acropolis. A paltry array—a tall, ugly column to
+Nelson, a choragic monument like the one to Burns on a hillside near
+Holyrood, an old observatory with a brown tower and a new one with
+a colonnaded portico and a dome, and, most mentioned of all, the
+so-called “ruin” of the proposed national monument to the Scotch dead
+of Waterloo and the Peninsula, which got no farther than a row of
+columns and an entablature when funds failed and work stopped. Many
+a bitter shaft of scorn and mockery has this ill-starred undertaking
+pointed for the disparagers of Scotland. However, in its present
+condition it has done more than any other agency to stimulate the
+pleasant illusion of the “Modern Athens.” The hill itself is a favorite
+resort, lofty, and with a broad, rounded top. The eastern slopes are
+terraced and set with gardens, and the western and northern sides
+are steep verdant braes. One yields<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span> the palm for reckless daring to
+Bothwell; not every one would care to speed a horse down such a course
+even to win attention from eyes so bright and important as Queen Mary’s.</p>
+
+<p>It was on Calton Hill I had my first experience of the old school of
+Scotchmen, in the person of a dry and withered chip of Auld Reekie,
+combative, peppery, brusque and sententious, and abounding in that
+peculiar admixture of braggadocio and repression so characteristic
+of the class. He had evidently been nurtured from infancy on Allan
+Ramsay’s collection of Scotch proverbs, for he quoted them continually,
+giving the poet credit for their origin. He was sitting in the shade of
+Nelson’s column in shirt sleeves and cap, absorbed to all appearances
+in a copy of “The Scotsman,” though I suspect he had been regarding
+me for some while with quite as much curiosity as I now did him. He
+was a grim, self-contained old party, as dignified as the Lord Provost
+himself, with gray, shaggy eyebrows and a thin, wry mouth that gripped
+a cutty pipe; and he looked so much a part of the surroundings, so
+settled and weather-beaten, that one might almost have passed him over
+for some memorial carving or, at least, an “animated bust.” Him I
+beheld with vast inner delight and gingerly approached, giving “Good
+day” with all the cordiality in the world. The reward was a curt nod
+and a keen scrutiny from a pair of hard and twinkling blue eyes that
+had an appearance under the grizzled brows<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> of stars in a frosty sky.
+I observed upon the fineness of the day; he opined “There had been
+waur, no doot.” I noted what a capital spot it was for a quiet smoke;
+he allowed I might “gang far an’ find nane better.” Here I made proffer
+of a cigar and, presumably, with acceptable humility, for he took it
+with an “Ah, weel, I dinna mind,” of gloomy resignation—and so we got
+things going.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation that followed I venture to give in some detail as
+illustrating, possibly, the peculiarities of a type to be encountered
+on every Edinburgh street corner—whimsical, conservative, witty,
+cautious in opinion, and surcharged with local pride.</p>
+
+<p>“A man can take life pleasantly here,” said I, when we had lighted up.</p>
+
+<p>“Aye, aye,” said he; “even a hard-workin’ one like mysel’, as Gude
+kens. But a bit smoke frae ane an’ twa o’ the day hurts naebody, I’m
+thinkin’; an’ auld Allan Ramsay was richt eneuch, ‘Light burdens break
+nae banes.’”</p>
+
+<p>“You will never be leaving Edinburgh, I’ll warrant.”</p>
+
+<p>“Na, na. Ye’ll have heard tell the sayin’, ‘Remove an auld tree an’ it
+will wither.’”</p>
+
+<p>“There’s more money to be made elsewhere, perhaps.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m no so sure o’ that. Forbye, ‘Little gear the less care.’”</p>
+
+<p>“One wouldn’t find a handsomer city than this, at all events.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Aweel, aweel, a’body kens that. Ye’ll no so vera frequently see the
+bate o’ it, I’m thinkin’. Them that should ken the best say sae.”</p>
+
+<p>“How many people are there here, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mare than three hunner an’ fifty thoosan’, I’m telt.”</p>
+
+<p>“No more? It is small for its fame. Why, Glasgow must be three times as
+large,” I ventured, resolved to stir him up a little.</p>
+
+<p>“Glesgie, is it! Think shame o’ yersel’, mon, to say the same! A
+grippie carlin, Glesgie! Waur than the auld wife o’ the sayin’, ‘She’ll
+keep her ain side o’ the hoose, and gang up an’ doon in yours.’ Ye
+canna nay-say me there. Gae wa’ wi’ ye!”</p>
+
+<p>“But you must admit it is a great port. The receipts are enormous, I’m
+told.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aye, an’ it’s muckle ye’ll be telt ye’ll never read in the Guid Buik!
+Port, are ye sayin’? Hae ye na thought o’ Leith? Or the bonny sands an’
+gardens o’ Portobello? Or Granton, forbye, wi’ the three braw piers
+o’ the Duke o’ Buccleuch? Ye’ll no be kennin’ they’re a’ a part o’
+Ed’nboro, maybe.”</p>
+
+<p>“But how about the ship-building on the Clyde?”</p>
+
+<p>“An’ what wad ye make o’ that? How ony mon in his senses could gang to
+think sic jowkery-packery wi’ the gran’ brewin’ ayont the Coogait is
+mair than ever I could win to understan’. It’s by-ordinar, fair! An’
+dinna loup to deecesions frae the claver an’ lees aboot muckle things.
+’Twas Allan Ramsay himsel’ said,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span> ‘Mony ane opens their pack an’ sells
+nae wares.’ It’s unco strange that a body should tak nae notice o’ the
+learnin,’ an’ the gran’ courts, an’ the three hunner congregeetions,
+an’ a’ the bonny kirks we hae in Ed’nboro, but must ever be spairin’
+o’ the siller. Do ye think, noo, it’s sae vera wonderful to ‘Put twa
+pennies in a purse, an’ see them creep thegither’? Glesgie may ken a’
+sic-like gear, I’m nae sayin’; but there’s no sae muckle worth in that,
+as ye’ll be findin’ oot, though ye read in the books til the morn’s
+mornin’. It’s a fair disgrace to hae sic thochts. Mon can sae nae mair.”</p>
+
+<p>“At any rate, there’s a fine university there.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s easy sayin’ sae. Muckle service is it! Gude kens a’ they learn
+there! Gin it’s cooleges ye’ll be admirin’, maybe ye’ll no be so vera
+well acquaint wi’ our ain toun? There’s nane in a’ Glesgie like the ane
+ye see the day. Mon, it’s fair dementit ye’ll be.”</p>
+
+<p>It took time and diplomacy and many a round compliment on Edinburgh to
+bring him out of his sulk; but eventually he yielded.</p>
+
+<p>“Aye,” said he, “I believe ye’ll be in the richt the noo. It’s gran’ up
+here, dinna misdoot it. Mony’s the braw sicht to be had, that’s a fac’,
+an’ I ken them a’ like the back o’ my hand. Sin lang afore yon trees
+were plantit, mare than ane fine dander hae I taen mysel’, bonny simmer
+days, lang miles o’er the heather. Ye’ll believe me, I’d gang hame and
+sleep soun’. It’s na sae pleesant, maybe, in winter, wi’ the dour haars
+an’ the fog an’ the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> east winds. But I aye like it fine in simmer,
+wi’ a bit nip o’ wind betimes an’ then fair again. At the gloaming
+it’s quaiet an’ cauller, and then aiblins I bide a blink an’ hae a
+bit puff o’ my cutty, an’ syne I’ll gang to my bed wi’ an easy hairt.
+But, wheesht, mon! It’ll be twa o’ the day by the noo, I’m thinkin’?
+Is it so! Be gude to us! Weel, weel, I’ll gang my gait. I maunna be
+late to the wark; it’s a fearsome example to the laddies. ‘A scabbed
+sheep,’ says auld Allan, ‘smites the hale hirsel’.’ Guid day to ye; an’
+keep awa’ frae Glesgie.” And with many a sigh and rheumatic hitch he
+shuffled off to the steps.</p>
+
+<p>The old man was right. “Frae ane an’ twa o’ the day” a blither or
+more inspiring spot than Calton Hill would be hard to find. What more
+could possibly be desired, with a city so fair and famous at one’s
+feet and the air tonic with the sweetness of the heather and the brine
+of the sea! Fancy plays an amiable rôle and adds to one’s contentment
+with shadowy illusions of the Canongate of bygone days acclaiming
+Scotland’s kings and queens as they ride forth in pomp and pageantry,
+with trains of fierce clansmen from the furtherest Highlands, with
+pibrochs screaming, bonnets dancing, and axes and claymores rattling.
+And Montrose may pass with his Graham Cavaliers, or Argyle leading the
+Campbells of the Covenant. With our eyes on Holyrood, pathetic visions
+float before us of fair Mary of many sorrows, over whose gilded gloom
+the poets have loved<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> to linger. One moment she looms in the heroic
+martyrdom conceived by Schiller, and the next we see her as Swinburne
+did in “Chastelard,” with</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent42">“lips</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Curled over, red and sweet; and the soft space</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of carven brows, and splendor of great throat</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Swayed lily-wise.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Welcome apparitions of later days throng about us on the hill: Ramsay
+and his “Gentle Shepherd,” young Fergusson and his wild companions,
+Burns with his jovial cronies, the scholarly Jeffrey, the learned
+Hume, the inspired Sir Walter, the delightful revelers of the “Noctes
+Ambrosianæ,” the gentle Lady Nairne, the eager, brilliant Stevenson,
+and Dr. Brown with the faithful “Rab” and Ollivant with “Bob, Son of
+Battle.” The crisp sunshine lies golden on Princes Street and all
+her flowered terraces; it glints the grim redoubts of the Castle and
+lingers on the crooked gables of High Street. From the brown heather of
+the Pentlands to the distant sparkle of the Firth stretches a vigorous
+and comely land. What man so callous as to feel no joy in “Scotia’s
+Darling Seat”!</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_053">
+<img src="images/i_053.jpg" alt="" width="545" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ANTWERP">ANTWERP</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">2 P.M. TO 3 P.M.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A table</span> in the lively little Café de la Terrasse, up on the broad
+stone <em>promenoir</em> overhanging the Antwerp docks, is one place
+in a thousand for the man who is inclined toward any such unusual
+combination as a maximum of twentieth-century business activity in
+a setting of the Middle Ages. He is fortunate in locality and happy
+in surroundings. A Parisian waiter removes the remains of his light
+luncheon of a salad of Belgian greens fresh this morning from a trim
+truck garden beyond the ramparts, refills the thin tumbler to the taste
+of the guest with foaming local Orge or light Brussels Faro or the
+bitter product of Ghent or the flat, insipid stuff they boast about
+at Louvain, and supplies a light for an excellent cigar made here in
+Antwerp of the best growth of Havana. Supposing it to be two o’clock
+of the usual mottled, doubtful afternoon,—for Antwerp’s weather, like
+Antwerp’s history, is mingled sunshine and shadows,—the loiterer may
+look out at his ease on a notable and fascinating panorama. Beneath him
+and to either side extend miles of massive docks of ponderous masonry,
+upon and about which swarms an ant-like multitude of nimble and active
+longshoremen plying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span> a network of ropes and tackle, and directing the
+labors of vast, writhing derricks that toil like a mechanical Israel
+in bondage. Snuggling close to the grim granite walls are merchant
+mammoths from the ends of the earth, and into these, with the ease of
+a man stooping for a pin, gigantic steel arms sweep tons of casks and
+bales that they have lightly plucked out of long wharf trains lying
+alongside. There is a prodigious bustling of porters in long blue
+blouses, shouts and cries from the riverful of shipping, trampling
+of thousands of hobnailed shoes, and an incessant clatter of the
+wooden sabots of little Antwerp boys in peaked caps and baggy blue
+trousers and of little Antwerp girls in bright skirts and curious white
+headdress.</p>
+
+<p>This sort of thing is proceeding for miles up and down the river front,
+and all through the intricate series of locks and <em>bassins</em> and
+canals that quadruple the wharfage of this rejuvenated old Flemish
+city. They are receiving whole argosies of raw material in the shape
+of hides, tobacco, and textiles, and are sending away fortunes in cut
+diamonds, delicate laces, linens, beer, sugar, and innumerable clever
+products of human hands from fragile glass to ponderous machinery.
+And they do it with more ease and, it seems necessary to add, with
+less profanity than any other port of Europe. What, then, could have
+possessed the genial Eugene Field to pass along that ancient slander on
+the excellent burghers of Flanders?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“At any rate, as I grieve to state,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Since these soldiers vented their danders,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Conjectures obtain that for language profane,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">There is no such place as Flanders.</div>
+  </div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">This is the kind of talk you’ll find</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">If ever you go to Flanders.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>While I should not wish to take such extreme ground as that assumed, in
+another connection, by a New York police inspector, when he observed
+that “every one of them facts has been verified to be absolutely
+untrue,” still I must say that, as far as I could notice, there is
+nothing notable about the Flemish oath as employed to-day. Indeed, it
+is more than likely that one could pass a long and pleasant evening
+loitering among the <em>tavernes</em> and recreation haunts of the
+Belgian soldier and civilian and come across nothing more vocally
+spirited than robust guffaws, possibly punctuated discreetly, or heavy
+fists thundering the time as a couple of comrades scrape over the
+sanded floor in the contagious rhythm of that venerable and favorite
+waltz of the Netherlands,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Rosa, willen wy dansen?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Danst Rosa; danst Rosa.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Rosa, willen wy dansen?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Danst Rosa zoet!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the other hand, if, with this much of an excuse, a stranger should
+go exploring Antwerp between two and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span> three o’clock in quest of
+“verkoop men dranken” signs, he would be quite otherwise repaid in
+the discovery of charming huddled and crooked streets and a wealth of
+architectural quaintness and beauty. He would have no difficulty in
+finding <em>tavernes</em> and drinking-places, particularly along the
+river front, where they abound. As he passed them he would encounter
+robust whiffs of acrid and penetrating odors with tar and fish in the
+ascendancy, and catch glimpses of a wooden-shod peasantry fraternizing
+with evil-eyed “water-rats” and devouring vast quantities of salmon and
+sauerkraut washed down with ale and white beer. There is no charge now,
+as once there was, for noise made by patrons. The silk-fingered gentry
+overreached themselves here, for when, a number of years ago, they had
+carried the robbing of foreign sailors to the point of international
+notoriety, the authorities took a hand and devised a system of payment
+for Jack ashore; then the American and English ministers and consuls
+established and made popular the Sailors’ Bethel on the quay, with its
+clean and attractive reading- and amusement-rooms, and the Sailors’
+Home on Canal de l’Ancre, where, for fifty-five cents a day, Jack can
+have a neat little room to himself and four excellent meals in the
+bargain. For these reasons among others, a visitor, even by night,
+finds much less of noise and revelry than he had anticipated, and
+beholds the thirsty Antwerpian content himself with a final “nip” at
+an <em>estaminet</em> or even make shift of a “nightcap”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> of mineral
+water or black coffee at one or another of the city’s innumerable
+cafés. In these he will himself be welcome to read the news of the day
+in the columns of “Le Précurseur” or “De Nieuwe Gazet,” or, better
+still, in the venerable “Gazet van Gent,” one of the oldest of existing
+newspapers, with nearly two hundred and fifty years of publication
+behind it. The real drinking will have been in progress where the
+out-of-town people have been dining <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à prix fixe</i>, and clinking
+their burgundy and claret glasses at the great hotels on the Quai Van
+Dyck, the Place de Meir, or the Place Verte. The palm should really go
+to the amusement seekers of the latter little square; for nothing this
+side the capacity of an archery club at a July kermess can compare with
+the thirst of the music lovers who throng the tables on the sidewalks
+before the restaurants and cafés of jolly Place Verte when the band
+is playing, on balmy summer evenings. Instead of dissipation, the
+man who explores Antwerp makes constant discovery of unanticipated
+delights. He observes about him in the surprising little streets of
+the old section an amazing collection of absurd roofs slanting steeply
+up for several stories, pierced with owl-like, staring, round windows;
+house fronts by the hundreds with denticulated gables stepping upward
+like staircases toward the sky; and pots of flowers and immaculate
+muslin curtains in tiny doll-house windows peering out from the most
+unexpected and impossible places away up among the eaves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> and chimneys.
+He will catch an occasional glimpse of massive old four-poster beds
+with green curtains and yellow lace valances; of shining oak chests,
+and high-back chairs, and brown dining-rooms wainscoted in polished oak
+and most inviting with ponderous side-boards set with Delft platters
+and gleaming copper and pewter pieces. From time to time he will see
+large, cool living-rooms in which the father enjoys his paper and
+meerschaum pipe, while the placid-faced mother employs herself with
+lace or embroidery and the fair-haired daughter at the piano tells how</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Ik zag Cecilia komen</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Langs eenen waterkant,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Ik zag Cecilia komen</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Mit bloemen in haer hand.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>As I previously observed, there is no better place for a preliminary
+impression of Antwerp than along the docks. There one acquires some
+adequate idea of the amazing extent of its industrial operations and
+enjoys, at the same time, an extraordinary panorama of a river choked
+with shipping in the immediate foreground, and, on the opposite bank,
+the sombre redoubts of Tête de Flandre and Fort Isabelle keeping watch
+and ward over the flat little farms that extend seaward in fields of
+pale-green corn and barley. For any one who has done the proper amount
+of preparatory reading on Antwerp, it will inspire stirring thoughts
+of the musical, artistic, and martial career of this rare old Flemish
+town.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span></p>
+
+<p>If the visitor be a lover of music—of Wagner’s music—the surrounding
+uproar and confusion will shortly fade into a charming reverie as he
+gazes far down the glittering zigzag of the Scheldt and some distant
+glimmer will take the form of the swan-boat of Lohengrin with the Grail
+knight leaning on his shining shield. The docks and quays will have
+disappeared, and in their place will once more lie the old low meadows,
+and, under the Oak of Justice, King Henry the Fowler will take seat
+on his throne with the nobles of Brabant ranged about him. Fair Elsa,
+charged with fratricide, moves slowly forward, sustained by her dream
+of a champion who is to come to her defense; and the heralds pace off
+the lists and appeal to the four quarters in the sonorous chant,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Wer hier im Gotteskampf zu streiten kam</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Für Elsa von Brabant, der trete vor.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And suddenly the peasants by the water’s edge cry out in amazement
+and point down the reaches of the river, and there comes glittering
+Lohengrin in the “shining armor” of Elsa’s dream. The champion steps
+ashore and gives no heed to the awe-hushed company until he has
+sung to his feathered steed what now every child in Germany could
+sing with him, “Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan.” And then the
+contest rages and the false Frederick falls, and the royal cortège
+retires to the neighboring old fortress of the Steen. All<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> night the
+treacherous Ortrud and her defeated Frederick plot by the steps of
+yonder cathedral, and there, in the morning, Lohengrin weds Elsa and
+the immortal Wedding March welcomes the “faithful and true” back to
+their fortress home. The black night of mistrust and carnage follows,
+and when day dawns Lohengrin bids farewell to his suspicious bride in
+these green Scheldt meadows and sails sadly away in his resplendent
+boat drawn by the dove of the Grail.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, if the visitor has a mind for history, he may
+scorn the pretty Grail story and look with stern eyes on this Scheldt
+and the battle-scarred city beside it, mindful of the deeds of blood
+and fire that fill the hypnotic pages of Schiller, Prescott, and
+Motley. The monk of St. Gall could have appropriately dedicated to the
+war-ravaged Antwerp of those days his solemn antiphonal “media vita
+in morte sumus.” The grim, turreted Steen, just at hand, recalls the
+bloody reign of Alva and how he condemned a whole people to death in an
+order of three lines. In its present rôle of museum it houses hundreds
+of implements of torture that once were drenched in the blood of the
+heroic burghers of Antwerp. Not all the horrors of the “Spanish Fury,”
+when eight thousand citizens of this town were butchered in three days,
+nor the stirring memory of the “French Fury,” with Antwerp triumphant,
+can dim the glory of the heroic resistance the “Sea Beggars” made to
+the advance of the Duke of Parma up the Scheldt.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_063">
+<img src="images/i_063.jpg" alt="" width="384" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">ANTWERP, FROM THE SCHELDT</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span></p>
+
+<p>From the cathedral tower one may see the little towns of Calloo and
+Oordam, on either bank of the river; it was between them that Parma
+built his bridge to obstruct navigation, and against it the men of
+Antwerp sent their famous fire-ships to open up a passage for the
+Zeelander allies. Gianibelli, who devised them, and whom Schiller
+styled “the Archimedes of Antwerp,” builded better than he knew, for
+with one ship he destroyed a thousand Spaniards and heaped up their
+defenses into a labyrinth of ruin. Could Antwerp have risen then above
+the clash of factions, there would have been no need later to tear down
+the dikes and present the strange spectacle of ships sailing over the
+land, and their story might have been as triumphant as Holland’s, and a
+united Netherlands have issued from those long wars with Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Here where the visitor takes his afternoon ease many a brave pageant
+foregathered in the troubled, olden days. In the magic pages of old Van
+Meteren’s chronicles we see them pass again: Cold, gloomy, treacherous
+Philip stepping from his golden barge to walk under triumphal arches
+on a carpet of strewn roses, surrounded by magistrates and burghers
+splendid in ruffs and cramoisy velvet; later on, the Regent, Margaret
+of Parma, strident and gouty, whom Prescott has called “a man in
+petticoats”; and then the bloodthirsty Alva; then the dashing “Sword
+of Lepanto,” the brilliant and romantic Don John of Austria; next,
+the atrocious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> Requesens; and, last of all, the revengeful Alexander
+of Parma. Hopeful, stolid, impassive Antwerp, ever the sheep for the
+shearers, ever believing that at last the worst was over, rejoices in
+her welcome to each as though the millennium had finally dawned on all
+her troubles and sets cressets to blazing in the cathedral tower and
+roasts whole oxen in the public squares.</p>
+
+<p>The scream of a river siren will arouse the visitor from the Past
+to the Present, and, with a sigh, he will saunter forth to see the
+places that cannot come to him. He will leave with regret this busy,
+fascinating river—“the lazy Scheldt” that Goldsmith loved. Excited
+little tugs are bustling busily about, queer-coated dock-hands struggle
+mightily with their mammoth burdens, and ships of every shape and
+pattern throng the roadstead before him. The sharp and trim Yankee
+sloop, the ponderous German tramp, the fastidious British freighter,
+the clean-cut ocean liner, and, best of all, the round-sterned,
+wallowing Dutch craft, green of hull and yellow of sail,—all are here,
+and, he can think, for his especial diversion. A canal barge crawls
+laboriously by, and in that floating home which she seldom cares to
+leave, a much-be-petticoated mother of Flanders busies herself with her
+many children and looks after the care of her tiny house;—and looks
+after it well, as you may see by the spotless little curtains that
+flutter in the windows and the bright pots of geraniums that stand on
+the sills. One recalls the keen delight this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> singular craft afforded
+Robert Louis Stevenson at the time he made his charming “Inland Voyage”
+from Antwerp. Quoth he: “Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise,
+a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread
+its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and
+the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green
+corn-lands; the most picturesque of things amphibious.... There should
+be many contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel
+and to stay at home.”</p>
+
+<p>Along the front there is also opportunity to expend a couple of francs
+to advantage for a ticket on the comfortable little steamer that is
+just impatiently casting off from the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">embarcadère</i>, and to go
+sailing with her on an hour’s voyage up the river to Tamise to view the
+shipping at greater length, to see the merchants’ villas at Hoboken,
+and finally the famous picture of the Holy Family at the journey’s end.
+Otherwise the visitor may take a parting look up the Quay van Dyck and
+the Quay Jordaens, examine once more the striking Porte de l’Escaut
+that Rubens decorated, and so turn a reluctant back on the bright life
+of the river to thread a crooked street or two, cobbled and tortuous,
+and issue forth on the Grand Place before the immense, fantastic Hôtel
+de Ville.</p>
+
+<p>In the drowsy early afternoon this quaint and curious old city hall
+wears a most friendly and reposeful air. To one who has never before
+seen any of these extraordinary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> Old-World buildings such a one as
+this will move such incredulity as mastered the countryman at the
+first sight of a giraffe;—“Shucks!” said he when he had looked
+it all over, “there never was such an animal!” Fancy a rambling,
+picture-book of a structure a hundred yards long, made up of the
+oddest combination of architectural orders—massive pillars for the
+first story, Doric arcades for the second, Ionic for the third, and
+last of all, an abbreviated colonnade supporting a steep, tent-like,
+gable-pierced roof! As though some touch of the whimsical might even
+so have been neglected, behold a pompous central tower, decorated to
+suffocation, arched of window and graven of column, rearing itself
+in three diminishing, denticulated stories above the long, sloping
+roof, until the singular, box-like ornaments on the very tiptop appear
+tiny Greek tombs of a cloud-hung Acropolis. The statues of Wisdom and
+Justice could pass for Æschylus and Sophocles, and the Holy Virgin
+on the summit might very well be Athena. The friendly air to which I
+have referred extends even to these statues, who have the appearance
+of shouting down to you to come in out of the heat and have a look
+at the great stairway of colored marbles and rest awhile before the
+splendid chimney-piece of delicately carved black-and-white stone in
+the elaborate Salle des Mariages. Subtle matchmakers, those statues!
+And, indeed, if Antwerp is the first steamer-stop of the visitor, he
+may well be pardoned for reveling in this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span> Hôtel de Ville as something
+that for picturesque beauty he may not hope to better elsewhere. And
+yet that would only be because he had not seen the glorious one at
+Brussels, or the grim and huddled caprice at Mechlin, or the incredible
+Halle aux Draps at Ypres, or the amazing Rabot Gate or Watermen’s Guild
+House of Ghent. And even these will fall back into the commonplace
+once he has drifted along the Quai du Rosaire of drowsy old Bruges and
+been steeped in picturesqueness and color that is beyond any man’s
+describing.</p>
+
+<p>No one who cares for structural quaintness and originality can fail
+to find especial delight in the surroundings of this venerable
+Grand Place. Along one entire side, like prize competitors in an
+architectural fancy ball, shoulder to shoulder, stiff and precise,
+range the old Halls of the Guilds. The Archers, the Coopers, the
+Tailors, the Carpenters, and all the others of that most unusual
+alignment, present themselves in full regalia of characteristic
+ornament and design. As though in keeping with their ancient traditions
+of stout rivalry, there is a very real air of vying between themselves
+for some coveted palm for fantastic bizarreness; and all the while with
+a solemn innocence of being at all grotesque or unusual. One could
+laugh at their naïve unconsciousness of the prodigious show they make,
+with sculptures and adornments of bygone days and a combined violent
+sky-line slashed with long eaves and bitten out in serrated gable ends.
+But there is little of merriment<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> and very much of reverence in the
+thoughts they excite of worthy pride in skill of craftsmanship and the
+glory their masters brought to this city in the sixteenth century in
+winning from Venice the industrial supremacy of the world. In those
+days there were no poor in all Antwerp and every child could read and
+write at least two languages, and the Counts of Flanders were more
+powerful than half the kings of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But the Grand Place has more to show than the guild halls. The apogee
+of the whimsical and fantastic has been attained in the choppy sea of
+red-tiled roof-tops that eddies above this huddled neighborhood. Grim
+old dormered veterans, queer and chimerical, palsied and askew, have
+here held their own stoutly through the centuries. They have echoed
+back the shouts of the crusaders, the triumphal cannon of Spanish
+royalty, and the free-hearted welcomes to foreign princes come to curry
+favor with the Flemish merchant rulers of the world. They have turned
+gray with the groans of their nobles writhing under the Inquisition
+and rosy with approval of the adroit and courageous William of Nassau.
+From their antique windows have leaned the burgomasters of Rubens and
+the cavaliers of Velasquez, brave in ruffs and beards; and out of the
+most hidden nests of their eaves the wan and pallid faces of their
+hunted sons have been raised to watch the approach of the ruthless
+soldiery of Requesens and Parma. These old roofs look down to-day on a
+rich and happy people<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> whose skill and tireless industry have reared a
+commercial fabric that astonishes the world.</p>
+
+<p>At this afternoon hour the Grand Place betrays little of its
+early-morning activity, when it is thronged with the overflowing stands
+of busy marketmen in baggy trousers, and banks of rich colors of the
+flower-women in immaculate linen headdress proffering the choice output
+of their scrupulously tilled farms. Scarcely less picturesque are
+these oddly garbed country-folk than the famous fish-venders over at
+Ostend, and certainly they are a more fragrant people to shop among. A
+curious and colorful picture they present with the long lines of gayly
+painted dog-carts blazing with peonies and geraniums. Huddled around
+the great statue of Brabo they quite throw into limbo the Daughters
+of the Scheldt that are disporting in bronze on the pedestal. Brabo
+himself, Antwerp’s Jack-the-Giant-Killer, pauses on high in the act of
+hurling away the severed hand of the vanquished Antigonus as though
+he could see no unoccupied spot to throw it in. Should he let go at
+random, and hit house Number 4, he could surely expect to be hauled
+down forthwith, for the great Van Dyck was born there, and Antwerp is
+nothing if not reverent of the memory of her glorious sons of Art. And
+Brabo cannot afford to take too many chances with the security of his
+own position, for he himself has a rival; Napoleon the Great was really
+a greater champion of Flanders than he, and overthrew a worse enemy
+of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> Antwerp’s than the fabled Antigonus when he raised the embargo on
+the Scheldt, that had existed for a century and a half under the terms
+of the outrageous Treaty of Westphalia, until scarcely a rowboat would
+venture over the silt-choked mouth of the river, and only then to find
+the famous capital a forsaken village of empty streets and abandoned
+factories. The dredging of the channel, the expenditure of millions in
+construction of wharves and quays, and the restoration of the city to
+its high place in the commercial world was a greater and more difficult
+work than Brabo’s.</p>
+
+<p>The varied and vivid life of Antwerp unfolds itself strikingly in the
+early afternoon to one who exchanges the sleepy, mediæval Grand Place
+for the broad, curving, crowded boulevard of the popular Place de Meir.
+It was just such clean and handsome streets as this that inspired John
+Evelyn to write so delightedly of Antwerp two hundred and fifty years
+ago, describing them in his famous “Diary” as “fair and noble, clean,
+well-paved, and sweet to admiration.” Indeed, everything seemed to
+have charmed Evelyn here, as witness his inclusive approval, “Nor did
+I ever observe a more quiet, clean, elegantly built, and civil place
+than this magnificent and famous city of Antwerp.” Rubens, the name of
+names in Flanders, was then too recently dead to have come into the
+fullness of his fame; whereas to-day one thinks of him continually here
+and likes nothing better than the many opportunities to study him in
+the completeness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> of his wonderful career—“the greatest master,” said
+Sir Joshua Reynolds, “in the mechanical part of the art, that ever
+exercised a pencil.” Even trivial associations of his activity are
+cherished; as we find them, for instance, in the little woodcut designs
+he made for his famous friend, Christopher Plantin, the greatest
+printer of the era, and which one handles reverently in the old Plantin
+house in the Marché du Vendredi—that picture-book of a house, where
+corbel-carved ceiling-beams overhang antique presses, types, and
+mallets, and great windows of tiny leaded panes let in a flood of
+light from the rarest and mellowest old courtyard in the whole of the
+Netherlands.</p>
+
+<p>The Place de Meir is Antwerp’s Broadway; and an afternoon stroll
+along it affords a constantly changing view of stately public and
+private buildings, no less attractive to the average man than those
+“apple-green wineshops, garlanded in vines” that delighted Théophile
+Gautier on the river front. Little corner shrines, so numerous in this
+city, shelter saints of tinsel and gilt and receive the reverence of
+a population that has four hundred Catholics to every Protestant. One
+must necessarily delight in a street whose houses are all of delicately
+colored brick, with stone trimmings carved to a nicety and shutters
+painted in softest greens. The imposing Royal Palace is graceful and
+beautiful, but human interest goes out to the stone-garlanded house
+across the way,—old Number 54,—where<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> Rubens was born and where he
+lived so many years and took so much pleasure in making beautiful for
+his parents. On either hand one sees solid residences of the most
+generous proportions, and all in tints of pink and gray, and busy
+hotels with red-faced porters hurrying about in long blouses. Picture
+stores and bookshops scrupulously stocked with religious volumes
+beguile lingering inspection. There are establishments on every hand
+for the sale of ecclesiastical paraphernalia, with windows hung with
+confirmation wreaths, crucifixes, rosaries, and what-not. Occasionally,
+even here, one discovers, crushed in between more consequential
+businesses, the celebrated little gingerbread-shops of which so much
+amused notice has been taken. Restaurants and cafés abound. One sees
+them on every hand, with their characteristic overflow of tables and
+chairs on the sidewalk, always thronged, both inside and out, with
+jolly, chattering patrons and gleaming in sideboard and shelf with
+highly polished vessels of brass and pewter. Here and there one passes
+the confectionery shops, called <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pâtisseries</i>, where ices, mild
+liqueurs, and mineral waters refresh a thriving trade. Stevenson
+found no relish for Flemish food, pronouncing it “of a nondescript,
+occasional character.” He complained that the Belgians do not go at
+eating with proper thoroughness, but “peck and trifle with viands all
+day long in an amateur spirit.” “All day long” is apt enough, for
+Antwerp’s restaurants and cafés are always thronged.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span></p>
+
+<p>These ruddy-faced and placid Belgians are a very serene and contented
+people. It is pleasant and even restful to watch them; they go
+about the affairs of life with such an absence of fret and fever.
+Spanish-appearing ladies float gracefully past in silk mantillas;
+priests by the hundreds shuffle along leisurely in picturesque hats
+and gowns; the portly merchant, on his way at this hour to the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">moresque</i>, many-columned Bourse, proceeds in like deliberate
+and unhurried fashion. Street venders, in peaked caps and voluminous
+trousers, approach you with calm deliberation and retire unruffled at
+your dismissal. On every sunny corner military men by the score “loafe
+and invite their souls.” Tradesmen in the shops and cabmen in the open
+go about their business as though it were a matter of infinite leisure.
+Even the day laborers in the streets, whose huge sabots stand in long
+rows by the curb, survey life tranquilly; why worry when a good pair
+of wooden shoes costs less than a dollar and will last for five or six
+years?</p>
+
+<p>The snatches of conversation one catches betray the confusion of
+tongues inseparable from a nation of whom one half cannot understand
+the other, and whose cousins, once or twice removed, are of foreign
+speech to either. The Dutch spoken in the Scheldt country is said to
+be as bewildering to a German, as is the French the Walloons employ
+in the valley of the Meuse to a Parisian. But although the Flemish
+outnumber their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span> fellow countrymen of Wallonia two to one, still French
+is the tongue of the court, the sciences, and all the educated and
+upper circles. It is like Austria-Hungary all over again. And French
+continues steadily to gain ground in spite of the utmost efforts of the
+enthusiasts behind the new “Flemish Movement.” One sees both classes
+on the Place de Meir,—the stolid, light-haired man of Flanders and
+the nervous, swarthy Walloon. The beauty of the blue-eyed, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">belle
+Flamande</i>  is in happy contrast with that of the slender, dark-eyed
+<em>Wallonne</em>, and their poets have exhausted themselves in efforts
+to do justice to either side of so delicate and distracting a dilemma.
+Our grandmothers heard much of the charms of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">La Flamande</i>
+when Lortzing’s melodious “Czaar und Zimmermann” was so popular,
+seventy-five years ago:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Adieu, ma jolie Flamande,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Que je quitte malgré moi!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">J’en aurai la de demand,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">J’ai de l’amitié pour toi.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The complexion of the life on the Place de Meir changes with the hours.
+Between two and three o’clock we find it disposed to adapt itself as
+closely as possible along lines of personal comfort. By five it will
+be lively with carriages and automobiles bound for the driving in the
+prim little Pépinière, or the bird-thronged Zoölogical gardens, or
+around the lake in the central park, with a turn up the fashionable Rue
+Carnot to the stately boulevards of the new and exclusive Borgerhout
+section.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span> At that hour one may count confidently upon seeing every
+uniform of the garrison among the crowds of officers who turn out to
+have a part in the beauty show. On the other hand, if it were early
+morning—<em>very</em> early morning—and the sun were still fighting
+its way through the mists and vapors of the Scheldt, the Place de Meir
+would resound with rattling little carts by the hundreds, bearing
+great milk cans of glittering, polished brass packed in straw, by
+whose sides patient, placid-faced women would trudge along in quaint
+thimble-bonnets, with plaid shawls crossed and belted above voluminous
+skirts and their feet set securely in the clumsy wooden sabots of the
+Fatherland. Market gardeners in linen smocks and gray worsted stockings
+would be bringing Antwerp its breakfast in carts only a little larger
+than the milk-women’s, and butcher boys would be scurrying by with meat
+trays on their heads or suspended from yokes across their shoulders.
+And all the echoes of the city would be forced into feverish activity
+to answer the wild clamor of the barking and fighting dogs, shaggy
+and strong, that draw all these picturesque little wagons. Assuredly
+there are few sights in Antwerp so impressive to the stranger as this
+substitution of dog for horse. It has been celebrated in prose and
+verse, with Ouida possibly carrying off the palm with her canine <em>vie
+intime</em>, “A Dog of Flanders.”</p>
+
+<p>As the loiterer continues his afternoon stroll to the large and
+central Place de Commune, crosses into the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span> chain of transverse
+boulevards, and returns riverward to that choicest spot of all, the
+tree-shaded, memory-haunted Place Verte, he is bound to reflect upon
+the vast changes that Antwerp, above all other Continental cities,
+has experienced in the last quarter-century. He will marvel, too,
+that Robert Bell should have lamented in his charming “Wayside
+Pictures” the paucity of gay life here and particularly the lack of
+theatrical entertainment. It may have been so when Bell wrote, fifty
+years ago, but it is decidedly otherwise to-day. So far as theatres
+go, they simply abound; nor could city streets be gayer than these,
+thronged with a merry, happy people and bright with the uniforms of
+artillery-men and fortress engineers, grenadiers of the line and
+the dashing <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chasseurs-à-cheval</i>. Every hotel and café has its
+orchestra; and in the early evening practically every square of the
+city has its concert by a band from a regiment or guild. There is no
+suburb, they say, but has its own band or orchestra, or both. Indeed,
+Antwerp is nearly as music-mad as art-mad.</p>
+
+<p>The shady aisles of poplars in the cozy Place Verte, the perfumes and
+peaceful sounds, the music of the cathedral bells, the homelike hotels
+and cafés and the drowsy, nodding Old-World house-fronts combine to
+produce a sense of comfort and satisfaction peculiar to this favored
+little square. There is, besides, a special and impressive feeling
+of something like the personal presence of the great Rubens; partly,
+perhaps, from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> the fact that the city’s chief statue of him, a lifelike
+bronze of heroic size, stands at the centre of the Place. Twice the
+normal stature of man it is, and its pedestal is five times as high as
+one’s head, and the great palette, book, and scrolls are all of more
+generous proportions than such things actually ever are;—but there
+seems nothing at all disproportionate in that, considering what he
+was and what the average man is. The memory of one who could paint a
+masterpiece in a day, who stood head and shoulders above every living
+artist of his time, and whose work has inspired and delighted mankind
+for three hundred years, becomes, like all great objects, positively
+prodigious from actual proximity. Such is the inevitable attitude
+towards Rubens when one touches the things he touched, walks the
+streets of the city where he was born, lived, and lies buried, where
+he wrought his greatest artistic triumphs, and where his finest work
+is still preserved and reverenced. The most admired cathedral in the
+whole of the Netherlands rises out of the fluttering tree-tops of the
+square, and the greatest treasures it contains are the product of this
+man’s genius. Every one feels the Rubens influence in the Place Verte;
+Eugène Fromentin, fresh from his pictorial triumphs of Algerian life,
+observed in “Les Maîtres d’Autrefois”: “Our imagination becomes excited
+more than usual when, in the centre of Place Verte, we see the statue
+of Rubens and further on, the old basilica where are preserved the
+triptychs which, humanly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> speaking, have consecrated it.” Such are the
+privileged emotions of the wise and fortunate visitors who pitch their
+passing tent in this fair and favored nook.</p>
+
+<p>Reflections over Rubens naturally arouse thoughts of the many sons
+of Flanders who won preëminence in the domain of art. No other
+city, inexplicable as it is, has, in modern times, seen so large a
+proportion of its citizens achieve the loftiest heights of fame in this
+glorious activity; nor has any other honored art so unaffectedly in
+memorializing their triumphs. In Antwerp there are scores of streets
+and squares, and even quays, named after its artists. There are also
+fine statues to Rubens, Van Dyck, David Teniers, Jordaens, Quinten
+Matsys, and Hendrik Leys, and other memorials to the brothers Van
+Eyck, to Memling, Wappers, Frans Hals, Van der Heyden, De Keyser,
+and Verboekhoven. In private and public collections the people
+have jealously kept possession of the masterpieces of their fellow
+countrymen. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, on the Place du Musée, is as
+much a treasure-house of Flemish art as the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam
+is of Dutch art. Again Place Verte plumes itself, for just around the
+corner was born the great Teniers, wizard depicter of tavern life and
+kermesses, and on one side is that tourists’ delight, the graceful,
+feathery well-top that Quinten Matsys wrought out of a single piece of
+iron, before the days when love inspired him to win the most coveted
+laurels of the painter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span></p>
+
+<p>However, art aside, Place Verte has distinctions of its own. Something
+of interest is always occurring here. Suburban bands hold weekly
+competitions in its artistic pavilion and the most skillful musicians
+hold concerts here each evening. The sidewalks then are crowded with
+chairs and tables, and at the close the people rise and join in the
+national hymn “La Brabançonne,” with its out-of-date lament to the
+men of Brabant that “the orange may no longer wave upon the tree of
+Liberty.” Of an afternoon a regiment may swing through in full regalia,
+the red, yellow, and black flag snapping in the van, and the band
+crashing out the ancient war-song “Bergen-op-Zoom.” If to-day were
+July 21 there would be tremendous enthusiasm and cheering celebrating
+the Fêtes Nationales in honor of the Revolution of 1830; as well there
+should, for Belgium is the smallest and one of the most desirable
+little kingdoms of all Europe, and the national motto, “L’Union fait la
+Force,” has to be closely adhered to if the Lion of Brabant would stand
+up under the baiting of his powerful and covetous neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>The passing of a Sister of the Béguinage, in sombre black garb and an
+extraordinary creation of immaculate white linen on her head, recalls
+the many things one has read of this interesting and noble order which
+is peculiarly Belgium’s own. Their neat little settlements are a source
+of endless admiration to strangers, and quite as fascinating is their
+beautiful vesper service<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span> which bears the pretty name of the “salut des
+Béguines.” Readers of Laurence Sterne, who should be legion, promptly
+recall the curious story of “The Fair Béguine” that Trim told Uncle
+Toby in “Tristram Shandy,” and the valiant Captain’s comment: “They
+visit and take care of the sick by profession—I had rather, for my own
+part, they did it out of good nature.”</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the proud distinctions of Place Verte to be at the very
+portals of Antwerp’s glorious cathedral, the largest, richest, and
+most beautiful in the Netherlands. From his café chair the visitor
+watches its great shadow steal over him as the afternoon wanes, while
+at any moment by merely raising his eyes he may revel in the graceful
+outlines of its sweep of ambulatory chapels and let the aspiring tips
+of delicate pinnacles and arches entice his vision to the loftiest
+point of its one finished and matchless tower. Never was Napoleon so
+pat in “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase” as when he compared
+this tower to Mechlin lace. It is delightful to look up above the
+trees of the Place at the enormous bulk of this tremendous structure,
+stained and darkened by the vapors of river and canals, study its rich
+carvings and stained-glass windows centuries old, and note how the
+blue sky, in patterns of delicate foliation and fragile arch, shines
+like mosaics through the clustered apertures of the filmy openwork of
+the lofty tower. A hundred bells drip mellow music from that exquisite
+belfry every few minutes all day long. You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> listen, perhaps, to detect
+the impression they gave Thackeray of a new version of the shadow-dance
+from “Dinorah,” conscious that they are going to haunt you as they did
+him for days after you have left Antwerp far behind. It is peculiarly
+appropriate that the Lohengrin Wedding March should be a favorite
+on the bells of the very cathedral where Lohengrin, according to
+the story, was married. Indeed, so many and so varied are the clear
+bell-voices of this great <em>carillon</em> that their music seems, as
+the neighboring bells of Bruges did to Longfellow,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Like the psalms from some old cloister,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">When the nuns sing in the choir;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And the great bell tolled among them,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Like the chanting of a friar.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Within this treasure-chest of a cathedral are jewels worthy of
+such a casket. One goes out of the glare of the afternoon sun into
+the coolness and scented gloom of its vaulted, many-aisled, and
+multi-chapeled vastness, and there in the hush of worshipers kneeling
+in prayer he finds splendid altars that gleam in a profusion of
+ornaments of silver, gold, and precious stones, glorious rose-windows,
+carven confessionals and choir stalls, life-like figures in wax clad
+in silks and crowned in gold, hundreds of masterful paintings, a high
+altar of extraordinary splendor blazing in costly decorations under a
+golden canopy supported by silver figures, and, at the centre of the
+seven aisles, Verbruggen’s far-famed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> carved wooden pulpit, realistic
+in lifelike foliage and birds, and with plump little cherubim floating
+aloft with the apparently fluttering canopy. As if this were not enough
+to distinguish any one church, here hang three of the most glorious
+creations of the hand of man, the masterpieces of Rubens himself. The
+Assumption alone could have sufficed; what is it, then, to have the
+tremendous glory of the presence of those greater achievements, The
+Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross! One feels he
+could easily do as did the hero of Gautier’s “Golden Fleece” and carry
+away forever after a hopeless passion for the beautiful, grief-stricken
+Magdalen.</p>
+
+<p>The power and appeal of sheer beauty has perhaps never been exampled as
+in the case of this cathedral. Through all the sackings and pillages of
+Antwerp the savagery and destructiveness of her foes have stopped here.
+The most ruthless soldiery could not bring themselves to lay violent
+hands upon it. One exception stands out in this remarkable experience,
+and that one was quite sufficient. The fanatical “Iconoclasts,”
+frenzied against the Church of Rome, fell to a depth of abasement below
+the worst villains of Spain. Those atrocious, misguided “Iconoclasts”!
+What a frightful page in Antwerp’s history is the one that recounts
+the three days of horrors of these frantic and terrible zealots, three
+hundred and fifty years ago! Schiller, Motley, and Prescott have told
+the story as few stories have ever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> been told. In the calm of this
+afternoon it is impossible to conceive the uproar and confusion with
+which these lofty arches then resounded. Fancy a horde of men and boys,
+lighted by wax tapers in the hands of screaming women of the streets,
+demolishing the altars and rending and destroying every exquisite
+decoration and even tearing open the graves and scattering the bones
+of the dead. Says Motley: “Every statue was hurled from its niche,
+every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully painted window
+shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured
+decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground.
+Indefatigably, audaciously,—endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural
+strength and nimbleness,—these furious Iconoclasts clambered up the
+dizzy heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they
+tore off in triumph the slowly matured fruit of centuries.”</p>
+
+<p>Not the cathedral alone, but every Catholic temple of Antwerp, and four
+hundred others in Flanders, were sacked in this sudden revolt against
+the Papacy. It is said that King Philip, when he heard of it, fell
+into a paroxysm of frenzy and tore his beard for rage, swearing by the
+soul of his father that it should cost them dear. How dear it shortly
+did cost them, both the guilty and the innocent, we are shown in the
+picture Schiller has drawn of Calvinists’ bodies dangling from the
+beams of their roofless churches,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> of “the places of execution filled
+with corpses, the prisons with condemned victims, the highroads with
+fugitives.” Such was one of the extraordinary experiences through which
+this beautiful cathedral passed—one of the maddest, most senseless,
+and most frightfully punished outbreaks in all history.</p>
+
+<p>In the company of the doves that nest among the pinnacles and arches
+away up in the cathedral tower, one looks out at this hour on a very
+considerable portion of the little kingdom—forty miles, they tell
+you, with a good glass, in any direction. It is a prospect well worth
+the weary climb. Just below, the tiled and gabled roofs rise and
+fall all about like a troubled sea. The crooked streets of the old
+section and the straight ones of the new, and the <em>places</em> and
+parks in verdant spaces here and there have the appearance of some
+vast topographical map. The gray Scheldt lies like a string of Ghent
+flax to Antwerp’s bent bow. A wrinkled arc of massive and intricate
+fortifications wards the rich city from its foes, and just beyond lie
+numerous tiny villages all with the exact primness of mathematical
+problems. An unusual country view is spread out on every hand. Canals,
+numerous as fences and dotted with boats and slowly-moving barges,
+sear the green fields like pale-blue scars; and white, dusty roads
+criss-cross with their solemn flanking of tall poplar trees. As if this
+region were the natural habitat of some strange and monstrous form of
+animal life, one beholds everywhere a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> semblance of motion and activity
+in the gaunt, waving, canvas arms of hundreds of plethoric windmills.
+Diminutive, trim farms, like little gardens, give the appearance of
+a general carpeting by Turkish rugs of vivid and diversified design;
+each has its whitewashed cottage roofed in thatch or tile and set in
+orchards hedged with box and hawthorn. Fields of corn, wheat, rye, and
+oats expand in well-kept richness, and in all this profusely cultivated
+region men, women, boys, and girls toil from the faintest dawn to
+sunset, and often all night by moonlight, content and even happy in the
+winning of enough to supply clothing and shelter and the unvarying fare
+of soup, coffee, and black rye bread. Seaward and northward lie sand
+dunes, dikes, and polders stretching away to the old morasses where the
+valiant Morini faced and stopped even Cæsar. Literary people will see
+in all this country the land of “Quentin Durward,” as that greatest
+story of Flanders comes to mind, and they will perhaps reflect upon the
+characteristics of the good burghers of those days, whom Sir Walter
+thought “fat and irritable,” and will see young Durward defying the
+ferocious “Wild Boar of Ardennes” in the perilous service of the fair
+Lady Isabelle, herself a Flemish countess.</p>
+
+<p>To the northwest one sees the gleaming reaches of the Scheldt emptying
+themselves into the distant sea and, nearer at hand, solemn little
+Terneuzen where the ships turn into the canal for Ghent—Ghent, the
+“Manchester<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span> of Belgium,” where old Roland swings in his belfry and
+calls</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent24">“o’er lagoon and dike of sand,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘I am Roland! I am Roland! There is victory in the land.’”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the east rise the spires of Westmalle, where in their Trappist
+convent austere disciples of St. Bruno, garbed in sackcloth and with
+shaven heads, pass their voiceless lives and keep watch beside the
+open graves in the orchard. To the south is venerable Mechlin on the
+many-bridged river Dyle, once famous for such laces as we may still
+see in the pictures of its immortal son, Frans Hals. Brussels lifts
+its towers forty miles due south, and stretches its broad roads to
+Waterloo. And it is there the black forest of Ardennes expands, where
+St. Hubert, patron of hunters, intercedes for the health of good dogs,
+and which certain Shakespearean editors have fixed upon as the Forest
+of Arden of “As You Like It.” Over there lies Namur where the gallant
+Uncle Toby of “Tristram Shandy” received the painful wound deplored of
+the Widow Wadman, “before the Gate of St. Nicholas,” as the precise
+description always ran, “in one of the traverses of the trench,
+opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of St. Roch.”</p>
+
+<p>One lingers long and delightedly over this charming panorama of
+fascinating and storied associations, until presently the great clock
+beneath us booms the hour of three, and our time is up. We turn
+regretfully from this toyland country and the gracious, old-fashioned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>
+town—this placid, music-loving, art-reverencing Antwerp, with its
+many gables and its many rare delights. The friendly moon, a little
+later, will silver her huddled roofs and serrated fronts, her façades
+whose fantastic ends will be steps for White Pierrot to go up to his
+chimney-tops, her quiet squares and quaint, twisting alleys, her solid
+burgher mansions and vineclad waterman cottages. Serene and chaste, the
+delicate spire of the magic cathedral will rear its traceried, guardian
+length from out the deep shadows of little Place Verte and look down
+all night, with the affection of half a thousand years, on this quaint
+and merry Antwerp snuggling up to the languid Scheldt.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_091">
+<img src="images/i_091.jpg" alt="" width="547" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ROME">ROME</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">3 P.M. TO 4 P.M.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Like</span> the lizards in the dusty Forum ruins, emerging from dusky retreats
+to warm and blink in the sun and then flash back into some sheltered
+refuge, so visitors at Rome issue from dim closing museums at three
+o’clock in the afternoon and gaze around in a stupid, dazed fashion on
+a sky of cloudless deep blue and on placid streets and squares that
+seem fairly to quiver in a golden haze of strong sunshine. After the
+cool interiors the sultry heat seems doubly oppressive, and there is
+something of the nature of a mild struggle before reality succeeds
+in summoning them back from that vague state of disassociation,
+that condition of all-mind-and-no-body, produced by an intense and
+protracted study of all those wonderful things that great museums
+contain. To this confused condition of mind there is generally added a
+further disquieting element in the shape of a blank misgiving as to how
+the intervening hour can be tolerably passed before joining the four
+o’clock promenaders in the Pincian Gardens to see Roman Fashion at its
+ante-prandial rites. And yet were strangers merely to remain receptive
+and allow their extraordinary surroundings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span> to assert themselves and
+supply the diversion with which they are dynamically charged, this is
+an hour that might well prove to be one of the most delightful of the
+whole twenty-four in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>For the masterful spell of the Eternal City is still world-conquering;
+it only asks the chance. Protract your stay as you will, there remains
+at last a sense of awe, almost of incredulity, at being, in the actual
+flesh, in precincts so ultra-venerated—in dread, historic Rome. It
+is only a somewhat milder form of the feeling that overpowered you
+the very first morning of your visit when, after the night’s sleep of
+forgetfulness, you read with amazed, half-awake eyes the printed slip
+on the bedroom door that affirmed your hotel to be on no less august
+an eminence than <em>one of the seven hills of Rome</em>. Even when you
+had rushed to the window for corroboration and stared out in excited
+astonishment on a vast shoulder of dusty, reddish brown ruins with pert
+vines greening in its loftiest recesses, and a guidebook insisted that
+they were the Baths of Diocletian, a reluctant fear remained that you
+might only be, after all, in the pleasant toils of the old, recurrent
+dream from which you might shortly and miserably awake.</p>
+
+<p>But if, at three o’clock of a summer afternoon, the particular museum
+whose doors are remorselessly closing upon your final, lingering look
+chances to be that fortunate one on the Capitoline Hill that houses,
+among its array of mellow antiques, the pointed-ear original of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>
+Hawthorne’s “Marble Faun,” you could not do better than make use of the
+remainder of the admission ticket and have a survey of Rome from the
+airy summit of the campanile in the rear. To effect this, one picks
+his way among the imposing remains of the ancient record-house of the
+<em>tabularium</em>, mounts the long flight of iron steps in a corner of
+its colonnade, and soon reaches the top of the tower of the Capitol,
+with Rome as utterly at his feet as ever it appeared to the eyes of
+Alaric and his Goths.</p>
+
+<p>In tones of soft yellow, gray, and dull orange the roof-masses sweep
+northward, eastward, and westward, while to the southward and at
+your feet lies heaped the earthy, dusty chaos of ruins that crown
+the imperial Palatine, the popular Cælian, and the luckless Aventine
+Hills. Parks and villa gardens are blotches of dark foliage; and,
+within its white embankment walls, the sacred Tiber, in a twisting
+yellow band, rushes swiftly down the face of the city in its mad rush
+for Ostia and the sea. Beyond the most distant suburbs extend the
+rolling plains of the Campagna like an all-embracing sea, until they
+seem to wash in a gentle surf about the Sabine foot-hills, away to the
+north, and brim southward to the verge of the Alban Hills beyond the
+farthest glimpse of the Aqueduct’s long line of broken arches or the
+dimming perspective of that taut thread, the Appian Way. From this
+vantage-point the city may hide no surface secrets. It lies below us
+like an enormous fan, whose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> converging point is the round Piazza del
+Popolo, a good mile to the north. Like three great fingers, there
+extend from that focus the Via Ripetta, the Via Babuino, and, in the
+centre and running toward us as straight as a ruler, the popular Corso
+carrying the old Flaminian Way right through the heart of modern Rome.
+By degrees we come to distinguish familiar churches among the hundreds
+of spires, towers, and domes; to pick out, here and there, a mediæval
+watchtower; to locate well-known squares; to name an occasional
+obelisk; to identify a column; and even to particularize some of the
+scores of fountains that give latter-day Rome a pleasant distinction
+among modern cities. The ribbed, blue-gray dome of St. Peter’s looms
+impressively from out the deep green of the Papal Gardens of the
+yellow Vatican; the circular bulk of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo and
+the columned Pantheon look as familiar as old friends to us—though
+they may not be friends to each other, with the latter, under papal
+stress, forced in other days to yield its beautiful bronze tiles to
+make saints’ ornaments and cannon for the former; the yellow walls of
+the Sant’ Onofrio monastery mark where died Tasso, “King of Bards,”
+and where they still show his crucifix and inkstand; and yonder is the
+great gray church where Beatrice Cenci lies in her nameless grave. If
+we turn and look southward we see strange sun-tricks among the bleak
+and shadowy corridors of the vast, half-demolished Colosseum, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>
+crumbling arches of the emperors warm into a venerable dotage. The
+sun-baked wreckage of the Forum expands at our feet in rows of column
+stumps, shattered arches, isolated shafts with clinging fragments of
+cornice and entablature, yawning earthen doorways and dusty heaps of
+cluttered brick and <em>tufa</em>,—like a gigantic honeycomb,—while all
+about it birds are singing divinely in the shade of the laurels. The
+famed Tarpeian Rock, just at hand, has little suggestion of a short
+shrift for traitors, with rookeries nestling snugly to its base and a
+rose-trellised garden on its commodious summit.</p>
+
+<p>Victor Emmanuel <abbr title="the second">II</abbr>, in the regal cool of bronze, gazes over his
+colossal charger in the gigantic monument on the Capitoline slopes
+below us and beholds the hills studded with the pretty white villas
+of his grandson’s prosperous subjects, and the Quarter of the Fields
+carpeted with the neat stucco homes of the poor that used to languish
+in the vile slums of the old Ghetto. Had he read Zola’s “Rome” he might
+even be justified in frowning at so defamatory a description of so
+pleasant a section. But apparently he prefers to watch the afternoon
+glow on the gleaming domes and towers and myrtle-set villas of the
+Trastevere, where the powerful and violent descendants of the ancient
+Romans still dwell; and to take amused note of Garibaldi over there
+twisting around on his big bronze horse to keep a wary eye on St.
+Peter’s.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span></p>
+
+<p>It taxes the credulity of the visitor to comprehend that yonder is
+the renowned Janiculum, down whose slopes Lars Porsena led his troops
+to contend with Horatius Cocles and his intrepid companions as they
+“held the bridge”—only a hundred yards from where we are standing.
+And, indeed, imagination is quite unequal to the tasks set it on
+all this historic ground. Even if we succeed in carrying ourselves
+back through the periods of the popes, the emperors, the republic,
+the kings, and possibly the shepherds, what is to become of us when
+confronted with the statement of Ampère that there were really “nine
+Romes before Rome.” It is quite enough to undertake the reconstruction
+of ancient Rome to the mind’s eye, such as authentic history describes
+it, considering how repeatedly its conquerors sacked it, and how both
+Nero and Robert Guisecard burned it; and that the Romans themselves, as
+Lanciani insists, have done more harm to it than all invading hosts put
+together. “What the Barbarians did not do,” ran the famous pasquinade,
+“the Barberini did.” It is, really, asking too much of the man who is
+risking “a touch of sun” to see the city from the sweltering top of
+the Capitol Tower, to expect him to be communing with himself in terms
+of <em>travertine</em> and <em>peperino</em> and reassembling antiquities
+as an agreeable pastime. He will probably content himself with a
+hasty glance around, and a little irreverent levity over the task of
+Ascanius, son of “the pious Æneas,” in building<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> a city on the scraggy
+ridge of distant Alba Longa, or the scramble the Roman bachelors must
+have had when they scampered down the neighboring Quirinal Hill with
+their arms full of their Sabine allies’ wives. As he trudges down the
+tower steps and catches periodic glimpses of that ancient Latium that
+is now the Campagna, he ought to devote a moment to self-congratulation
+that the pestilence no longer stalks there by night and noon-day, or
+that the evil <em>campagnards</em> of Andersen’s “Improvisatore” no more
+terrorize with impunity, or wild beasts imperil the wayfarer; but
+rather that these latter themselves flee, especially the foxes, what
+time the red-coated gentlemen of the English Hunt round on them among
+the shattered tombs of the Appian Way.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, if the visitor is a sentimentalist, no Italian sun is going to
+rob him of his reverie: he will be hearing the cries of the Christian
+martyrs at a Colosseum matinée, and beholding the pride and beauty of
+ancient Rome loitering along the palace-lined streets on their way to
+the afternoon diversions at the Baths of Caracalla. And the Forum will
+bustle with the state business of the world, Cicero will mount the
+rostrum, and a train of Vestal Virgins pass demurely along the Sacra
+Via. He will attend the mournful wails of priests at worship in the
+temples of Jupiter and Saturn, and thrill to see a detachment of the
+Prætorian Guard dash into the Forum and acclaim some new military hero
+as emperor. But this should be sufficient to startle him back to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>
+Rome of to-day, and as he looks anxiously over to the northwestern
+walls, beyond which once stood that infamous camp, he will doubtless
+rejoice devoutly that the sober and law-abiding soldiery that drills
+there now is something so very different from the uncontrollable
+“Frankenstein” that the Cæsars devised to their own undoing. It is,
+in consequence, with hearty complacence that he will turn his back on
+even the aristocratic treasure-heap of the lordly Palatine, conscious
+that if the cry were raised to-day, “Why is the Forum crowded, what
+means this stir in Rome?” the reply would be forthcoming, “Tourists and
+picture-card sellers and peddlers of cameo pins.”</p>
+
+<p>Parenthetically, it may be observed that, although pathos and bathos
+rub elbows in the foregoing reflections, still incongruities come
+very near to being the rule in latter-day Rome. What is to be said
+of obelisks of the Pharaohs with Christian crosses on their tops? Of
+the column of Trajan with St. Peter at its summit, and at its base
+those twentieth-century cats that visitors feed with fish bought
+from stands at hand for the purpose? Of St. Paul on the column of
+Marcus Aurelius, and the sign of an American life insurance company
+across the street? Of a modern playhouse in the mausoleum of Augustus
+where the emperors were buried? Of the present use of King Tarquin’s
+great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, just as good as it was twenty-five
+hundred years ago? Of electric lights where<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span> Cincinnatus had his
+cabbage-farm? Of a Jewish cemetery above the circus of Tarquin? Of
+steam-heated flats in the gardens of Sallust? Of modern houses at the
+Tarpeian Rock, and the Baths of Agrippa? Of street cars with the name
+of Diocletian? Of automobiles on the Flaminian Way? Of tennis courts
+beside the burial-place of a Cæsar? Of motor-cycles around the tomb of
+the Scipios? Of an annual Derby down the Appian Way? Of railroad trains
+beside the old Servian Wall? Of telephone booths on the banks of Father
+Tiber? Modernism is, indeed, with us, as his Holiness laments!</p>
+
+<p>The sultry, torrid hour that lies between three o’clock and four of
+a summer afternoon usually sees Rome rubbing her eyes, fresh from
+her siesta, that ancient midday nap that Varro declared he could not
+live without; and you may be sure the final rub would be one of vast
+amusement if she were to see you walking on the sunny side of the
+street, where, by the terms of her immemorial observation, only dogs
+and foreigners go. The heat is intense on these lava pavements; one
+keeps religiously to the shade. But Roman society is not rubbing its
+eyes,—at least, not in town,—for <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tout le monde</i>  is passing
+the annual <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">villeggiatura</i>  at its villa in the hills or by the
+sea, economizing for the fashionable expenditure of the winter, and,
+incidentally, obliging the people who stay in town with that much more
+of elbow room on the Corso and other popular promenades. All of which
+helps a little in making the stroll from the Capitoline<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span> Hill to the
+Pincian Gardens rather more comfortable than moving around the hot-room
+of a Turkish bath.</p>
+
+<p>As we pick our way down the Capitoline slope, pass Marcus Aurelius on
+his fat bronze steed, and “bend our steps,” as the old novels used
+to say, toward the tramway-haunted uproar of the Piazza di Venezia,
+the rabble rout of the slum district on the left affords a lively
+conception of the element that goes farthest to make Rome howl. Having
+been told that this old Ghetto had been swept and garnished, one is
+properly indignant at finding the air redolent of garlic and everybody
+under conviction that the chief end of man is to amass macaroni and
+enjoy it forever. You gaze askance on a universal costume of filth and
+rags, and hurry along through it, protesting that, while you would not
+invoke the precedent of Pope Paul <abbr title="the fourth">IV</abbr>’s sixteenth-century method of
+putting gates across the streets, and locking the people in and making
+the men wear yellow hats and the women yellow veils, as he did with the
+Jews, still some expedient ought to be hit upon for making the district
+look a little less like a camp of Falstaff recruits. “A frowzy-headed
+laborer,” say you, “shouldering a basket of charcoal, may seem
+attractive in Mr. Storey’s ‘Roba di Roma,’ but in real life one likes
+to think men can afford shirts, and not have to wear rags over their
+shoulders after the manner of a herald’s tabard.” You pause a moment
+to watch the disappearance of a yard of macaroni down some red gullet,
+and George Augustus<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span> Sala’s description of the banquet of the seven
+wagoners rushes to mind: “Upon this vast mess they fell tooth and nail.
+The simile is, perchance, not strictly correct. Teeth may be <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">de
+trop</i>. You should never bite or chew macaroni, but swallow each
+pipe whole, grease and all, as though it were so much flattery. But
+their nails they did use, seeing that they ate the macaroni with their
+fingers. What wondrous twistings and turnings-back of their heads, what
+play of the muscles of their throats, what straining of their eyeballs
+and vasty openings of their jaws, did I study as they swallowed their
+food.”</p>
+
+<p>And now we begin to have the usual experience of Roman mendicancy.
+Truly, there is no beggar like your Roman beggar. He has raised his
+profession to both an art and a nuisance. Appeals to charity take every
+form and phase. Evidences of anatomical disaster are utilized to excite
+pity at so much per sigh. Tales of misery and misfortune ring all the
+changes of fervency and fancy. Their whines are both groveling and
+dramatic. “Niente!” they moan, as with woe-begone faces and pathetic
+twists of their necks they sidle up with stiff gestures of weary and
+hopeless expressiveness; “Illustrissimo! Eccellenza! Per amor di Dio!”
+You could not bluff them, though you were armored in all the calloused
+nonchalance of the average ambulance surgeon; and your doom is sealed
+if you undertake to bandy repartee, for their invective is as searching
+as a satire of Juvenal. Whether you give or not, their volubility<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>
+and frankness continue unabated; for you are savagely cursed if you
+decline, and if you acquiesce are blessed strictly in proportion to
+the gratuity. Indubitably, in the social scheme of the beggar we be
+brethren all and should each aid the other—after the philosophy of the
+Italian, saying, “One hand washes the other, and both the face.” The
+Roman, understanding them, passes coolly by; but the foreigner, who is
+their special prey, gives up in desperation, on the principle of the
+local proverb, “We are in the ballroom and we must dance.”</p>
+
+<p>Parenthetically, again, they say the authorities are helpless to curb
+this universal Roman nuisance. It is an institution. These beggars come
+of all classes—from the Capuchin and Franciscan lay brothers who go
+about in brown robes, rope girdles, and sandals and present a basket
+for food, to the dirty urchins of the Appian Way who stop your carriage
+with their acrobatic proficiency and then howl for <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">soldi</i>  in
+the name of all the saints. Many a beggar here is a bank depositor;
+and any of them who can retain the monopoly of the door of a popular
+church may confidently look forward to affluence. Very likely they are
+better business men, in their way, than many who drop coins into their
+pathetic, swindling hands. <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">À chacun son métier.</i> </p>
+
+<p>It would extend a Brooklynite to negotiate the crossing of the Piazza
+di Venezia. It is the grand gathering-place of tramcars, busses,
+cabs, carts, bicycles, and every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span> other form of conveyance. You will
+certainly find a “Seeing Rome” automobile, with the lecturer pointing
+out the castellated old Palazzo di Venezia and telling his people that
+it was built of stone from the Colosseum, and has been the seat of
+the Austrian embassy to the Curia for over a hundred years. So far as
+traffic is concerned, this is the heart of Rome. Nothing less than a
+whirlpool could be expected in a spot that is the confluence of such
+full streams of life as the Corso and the Via Nazionale. One admires
+its broad, busy sweep, and the dignity of the solid old gray buildings
+that rim it. No mid-afternoon heat lessens the bustle and activity that
+rages here; even the experienced natives can be found in large numbers,
+jostling their way across it, and visitors pass through in droves to
+reach the Cenci Palace or to see the spot where Paul dwelt for two
+years “in his own hired house.”</p>
+
+<p>If you stopped, as I did, at one of the hotels near the Baths of
+Diocletian, the Via Nazionale will have a friendly suggestion of the
+nearest way home. With thoughts of that temporary home the recollection
+often comes to me of the mildly stimulating delight I once found in
+getting lost by night in this city of superior chance encounters.
+It seemed, on the first occasion, as though I had scarcely turned
+the corner into the Via Cavour before a delicious conviction of
+unfamiliarity with my surroundings assured me I was pursuing a course
+that was certain, sooner or later, to lead to artistic discovery<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>
+or adventure. Nothing was easier than getting lost, for I was newly
+arrived; and yet localities and objects of consequence were not without
+significance, for, like every one else, I had a vivid idea of the
+landmarks of the famous city. And first of all, I discovered I was
+passing the infamous spot where “the impious Tullia” drove her chariot
+across the bleeding body of her royal father; whence I hastened on,
+with furtive glances. Next, after some speculation I identified an
+enormous church to be none other than the famous Santa Maria Maggiore,
+whose ceilings, I had read, were crusted with the first gold brought
+from the New World, and to whose high altar the popes used to come by
+torchlight for New Year’s mass. I thrilled at the incredible reflection
+that the street cars crossing that corner would be passing, a moment
+later, the site of the gardens of Mæcenas where Horace and Virgil
+had mused and read their verses. A few blocks farther on I came to a
+halt before the house of Lucrezia Borgia; and I tried to fancy the
+circumstances of the night of their quiet family supper there, before
+the children took leave of their mother with false words of affection
+and Cæsar hurried to gather his bravos and overtook Francesco, and,
+muffled in a cloak, sat his horse in easy unconcern while his brother
+was done to death and thrown into the Tiber. For relief I turned
+across the street to the church of St. Peter-in-Chains, and imagined
+how Michael Angelo’s vigorous Moses might be appearing in the dark of
+the side aisle, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> thought of the master striking the completed work
+with his mallet and crying out, “Now, speak!” On I rambled, through a
+block or two of darkened shops and gloomy houses, and suddenly a great
+open space yawned before me and I was staring at rows of column stumps,
+mellowed and battered, and among them a tall, ghostly shaft of marble
+with a spiral band of half-mutilated reliefs winding away up to the
+summit, where was the dusky outline of a sculptured form. It was the
+old school-geography picture come to life! There was I in the heart
+of an unfamiliar city, alone, by night, with this vast relic of the
+ancients. It was like Stanley finding Livingstone in Africa. I felt I
+had honestly discovered it and that it ought to be mine. It was the
+Forum of Trajan!</p>
+
+<p>It will seem a violent transition to jump from midnight to
+mid-afternoon, but the plunge must be taken. The normal state of
+the Corso at three-thirty of a summer afternoon is one of leisurely
+activity. The crowds are lethargic, slow-moving, inclined to curiosity.
+An interesting social comedy is proceeding, with foreign ladies playing
+sight-seeing rôles, clutching their red Baedekers and Hare’s “Walks
+in Rome.” Jostling groups of them gather before the beguiling shop
+windows, and occasionally one enters and possesses herself of a Roman
+pearl or cameo, or perhaps a mosaic or copy of an antique bronze.
+Business people pass along in their habitually distrait manner, and
+priests beyond number<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span> brighten the scene with habits of every hue.
+There is little enough of room in the middle of the street and scarcely
+any on the sidewalks. Like all Roman thoroughfares, the Corso is clean
+and distinguished. Long perspectives of gayly awninged shops extend
+toward the Piazza del Popolo, agreeably broken here and there by the
+interposition of mellow old palace fronts and richly sculptured baroque
+façades; and there is frequent opportunity for passing glimpses into
+cool courtyards attractive with foliage and fountains.</p>
+
+<p>Visitors keep forsaking the Corso at every turning to make inspiring
+discoveries in the tangled mesh of side streets. We are at liberty
+to suspect those who go to the west, of sentimental designs on the
+star under the dome of a neighboring church that marks the spot where
+Julius Cæsar was assassinated in Pompey’s Senate House; or, perhaps,
+of an intention to visit the sombre statue of Giordano Bruno in the
+Field of Flowers, and reflect upon what a constant rebuke it must be to
+the church that burned him there, three centuries ago, for persisting
+in his “modernism” to the outrageous extremity of defending the
+astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and like heresies of the hour.</p>
+
+<p>Afternoon walks in Rome should be frequently interrupted, not only
+to escape the floods of sunshine, but to find out occasionally what
+is behind the mellow garden walls over whose tops glistening, green
+foliage droops enticingly down with hints of cool and restful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>
+retreats. Such an opportunity presents itself here in the rare Colonna
+Gardens, just around the corner of the great Colonna Palace where
+earlier in the day the Titians and Tintorettos ravish the artistic.
+Spacious, elegant Rome has nothing more charming and exquisite than
+such gardens as these. Art and antiquity are everywhere in restful
+profusion—“storied urn and animated bust.” It is even said that
+sculptures are to be found almost anywhere underground for the mere
+pains of exhuming. One rests with infinite satisfaction in the deep
+shade of eucalyptus, cypress, ilex, and laurel, to the sweet singing
+of multitudes of birds. There are roses and oranges in bloom, and tall
+hedges of clipped box, and musical little cascades tumble down from
+terrace to terrace and drip over mossy marble steps. In this particular
+garden come thoughts of Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, who so
+often strolled along these very paths and communed in their serene and
+beautiful friendship. Theirs was a faith that brought its own reward.</p>
+
+<p>And what, pray, without its amazing faith, would this Catholic Rome
+be, anyway? <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">À chaque saint sa chandelle.</i>  Otherwise, what would
+become of that marble block from the floor of the Appian Way—which the
+stubborn archæologists will insist was really paved with silex—that is
+preserved with so much reverence in the church of Domine Quo Vadis, as
+showing the impressions of the feet of Our Lord and St. Peter when they
+faced each other there on the occasion of the memorable rebuke<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> of the
+latter for his proposed flight from Rome? And how about the <em>scala
+santa</em>—the worn and venerated marble steps in the shrine near the
+church of St. John Lateran, which were brought from Jerusalem and up
+which we are told Christ passed on his way to the judgment seat of
+Pilate? The faithful thank God for the privilege of ascending them on
+their knees, praying, and receiving the indulgence of a thousand years
+of purgatory; and they were worn thin with kisses long before the day
+when Martin Luther got halfway up and suddenly quit and came tramping
+down with a voice crying in his ears, “The just shall live by faith.”
+And without faith, where would be the use of the miraculous Bambino,
+the adored and bejeweled little wooden image that a Franciscan pilgrim
+carved from a tree of the Mount of Olives and which is imposingly
+domiciled in a glass case in the church of Ara Cœli? They say there
+is no disease that the Bambino cannot cure; and when his keepers
+accompany him through the streets on his errands of mercy, conveyed
+in his magnificent buff coach, people kneel by hundreds and beseech a
+blessing. Such blessing may be secured, though possibly of a diminished
+efficacy, by buying one of his legended cards at the church and having
+the priest rub it across the glass top of the case. Who would eschew
+faith and forfeit such advantages? Would we not still have Life’s
+puzzle, and without this key? Might we not even be reduced to a plane
+as confused and desperate as that of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span> the famous Sultan of Turkey, who
+knew so little of music that, when his new Italian band had finished
+tuning-up, he shouted in delight to the leader, “Marshallah! Let the
+dogs play that tune again!”</p>
+
+<p>At this languorous hour of the afternoon the broad, sunny piazzas with
+their many fountains afford incomparably lovely loitering-places on the
+way to the Pincio. The one of the Quirinal is a near neighbor to the
+Colonna Gardens, and there you may shelter under eucalyptus trees and
+dream over the brown old obelisk and the vigorous fountain sculptures
+of the “horse-tamers” that once graced the Baths of Constantine, and
+philosophize over the irony of fate that converted a papal summer
+residence into a royal palace. Or you can thread your way through
+narrow streets of the Middle Ages that are lined by ochre-colored
+houses with sun-shades, where artists have their studios and transients
+their <em>hôtels garnis</em>, and down which a belated wine-cart may
+jangle or a gayly painted Campagna wagon creak, with its oxen festive
+in bells and crimson tassels and its rugged driver clad in blue. Were
+you to follow these typical byways of mediæval Rome until you came to
+the embankment of the Sant’ Angelo Bridge, you would pass by where
+Benvenuto Cellini lived among his goldsmiths, and could identify the
+Gothic window of the old Inn of the Bear where Montaigne stopped,
+centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>At this hour the Trevi Fountain is doubly appealing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span> and refreshing,
+rejoicing the whole side of its roomy square with sparkling waters that
+dash merrily about Neptune and his allies in the wall niches. Devoted
+as one may be to the venerable tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Appian
+Way, he will fervently commend Pope Clement for having pillaged some
+of its stone to supply this cheery fountain with its dramatic setting.
+Were this our last day in the city we should certainly toss a copper
+coin over our left shoulder into these boiling waters, to insure a
+return to Rome. Of course, one is pretty sure to come again anyhow; but
+that makes it a certainty. Besides, it is much less trouble than going
+away out to Tivoli to ask the same thing of the Sibyl in the Grotto.</p>
+
+<p>Were you to yield to the fountain habit, you would go bird-hopping all
+over town, for no city has so many or such beautiful ones as Rome,
+thanks to its huge aqueducts. It is a never-failing delight to turn a
+corner and come across one of these sun-deluged pleasaunces with its
+crowds of picturesque loungers; its tritons, “rivers,” and sea gods
+disporting themselves in attitudes of aqueous grace and gayety; its
+flower-girls banked behind fragrant barriers of roses and violets; and
+the slender columns of water streaming sideways like tattered flags in
+a breeze.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_113">
+<img src="images/i_113.jpg" alt="" width="396" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mid-afternoon is an admirable time to drop in at the most popular of
+all the piazzas, the Spanish Square. One wonders how the jewelers
+of the Via Condotti<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span> manage to make both ends meet, with such a
+superior attraction at hand. It is certainly one of the most charming
+nooks in Rome. A heavy golden sunshine glorifies, at this hour, the
+broad reach of the Spanish Steps, themselves quite as wide as the
+square, that sweep between picturesque parapets like a yellow cascade
+from the terraces of the church at S. Trinità de’ Monte to the
+boat-shaped fountain in the piazza below. About them, drowsy, dusty,
+Old-World houses supply a pleasant background of soft color, and the
+crystal-clear Italian sky spreads above like a cathedral dome. The
+flower market is the crowning touch, with a flood of fragrant blooms
+welling over the lower steps and rimming the fountain edge in brilliant
+hues of purple Roman anemones, orange wallflowers, white narcissus,
+golden daffodils, snowy gardenias, violets, camelias, hyacinths,
+mignonettes, and every fair and odorous blossom. A lovely, sunny,
+fragrant spot—this Piazza di Spagna; a place to dream whole days away
+in; a well-beloved corner of fascinating Rome, where one may realize to
+its fullness the beautiful, consoling reflection of Don Quixote, “But
+still there’s sunshine on the wall.”</p>
+
+<p>Literature has had its chosen seat in the Piazza di Spagna. Half the
+traveled world of letters has lived or visited there. It invests the
+spot with a fresh and human interest to know that it has been the
+musing-place of such rare spirits as Byron, Smollett, Madame de Staël,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>
+Cooper, Andersen, Thorwaldsen, Hawthorne, Goethe, Chateaubriand,
+Dickens, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Lowell, and Longfellow. One
+thinks of the Brownings entertaining Thackeray, Lockhart, and Fanny
+Kemble. But, of course, the closest memories are of Keats and Shelley,
+who lived in either corner house—those radiant friends whose ashes
+repose under myrtles and violets in the cypress-shaded cemetery beyond
+the Aurelian Wall. The works of all these authors, as also of the
+others who may or may not have seen the Piazza di Spagna,—along with
+the idealism of Fogazzaro, the sensuality of D’Annunzio, the realism
+of Verga, and the grace of De Amicis,—are to be had at the celebrated
+shops of Piale or Spithöver, in the square; where, also, you may at
+little expense become a momentary part of Rome’s bohemia over toast and
+muffins in the adjoining tea-rooms.</p>
+
+<p><i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Chacun à son goût.</i>  If you are cold to tea there may be something
+else to interest in the numerous cafés of the neighborhood that begin
+to hum with activity as the hour approaches four. And, indeed, they may
+be angels in disguise for such as have tried <em>pension</em> life and
+grown sadly familiar with puddings as mysterious as Scotch haggis, meat
+that suggested <em>travertine</em>, and pies constructed of something
+like <em>silex</em> and <em>tufa</em>. Besides, in the cafés you can
+regale yourself with vermouth, syrups, or ices, and at the same time
+observe the Roman at his afternoon ease—thus realizing in yourself
+the acuteness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> of the Italian proverb, “One blow at the hoop and one
+at the cask.” It is quite worth the cost to see how quickly the chairs
+and little marble-topped tables, out on the sidewalk, are taken by
+leisurely <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">habitués</i>  bent on gossip; by precise old gentlemen in
+lavender gloves who drop in for a tumbler of black coffee and a hand
+at dominoes; or by foppish young men in duck trousers, who clatter on
+the tables for the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cameriere</i>  to bring copies of the “Tribuna” so
+they may sup on frivolities and horrors along with coffee and tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>A ruder jocundity also, at this time, is making its start for high
+tide in poorer sections, where in arbored <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">osteries</i>, Tuscan
+wine-shops, and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">spacci da vino</i>  straw-covered fiascos of chianti
+are passing, along with glasses of local wines whose prices will be
+found conspicuously chalked up on the outsides of the taverns at so
+many <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">soldi</i>  per half-litre.</p>
+
+<p>As we follow the Corso toward the Pincian Gardens we find the
+congestion increasing, with a decided addition of carriages all
+bound in our direction. It is now the hour of the afternoon
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">passeggiata</i>; and one marvels that the ancient campus Martius
+should still be the heart of Rome, and wonders how this narrow street
+could have held its crowds when the mad, brilliant scenes of Carnival
+riot and revelry were enacted before these old Renaissance palaces.
+Every restaurant of the tumultuous Piazza Colonna is working to
+capacity, and groups of gay army officers swagger about the corners<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>
+and over by the marble basin beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius where
+the taxi-cabs have their chief stand. No red-and-white street car
+dares venture in this favorite square, but busses and cabs supplant
+them to distraction. And who, indeed, does not prefer an omnibus to
+a street car! It may want the latter’s business-like directness, but
+what a holiday air it has of cozy, informal deliberateness! It is
+coaching in town. You may not arrive so soon, but what a lark you had!
+And if you mock at the faithful bus, there are the impertinent Roman
+cabs. Here is speed, seclusion, and economy. You cannot fail to be
+suited both financially and æsthetically, for you may pick between
+the latest varnished output of the factory and venerable, decrepit
+ramshackles that look to have been contemporary with the Colosseum. The
+Roman cabmen are an inconsequent lot; they wear green felt hats and
+greasy coats, and dash at one with a reckless scorn of human life that
+strengthens a suspicion that they are really banditti of the Campagna,
+transparently disguised. The famous Column of the philosophic Emperor
+never lacks its groupings of adaptable “rubber-necks,” who are twisting
+themselves into suicide graves trying to read the spiral band of
+reliefs that winds away up to the statue of St. Paul.</p>
+
+<p>The Corso <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">passeggiata</i>  is an interesting affair. Toward four
+o’clock it quite fills the street. Young girls are out, with their
+inevitable chaperons, kittenish and alert-eyed;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> Bergamasque nurses,
+with scarlet ribbons and extraordinary silver ornaments falling below
+their snowy muslin caps; clerks in sober black; Douane men, in short
+capes and shining hats with yellow rosettes; hatless women, with light
+mantillas over their blue-black hair; the stolid country-folk,—the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">contadini</i>,—with the men in brown velvet jackets and goatskin
+breeches, and the women in faded blue skirts and with red stays
+stitched outside their bodices; the despised <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">forestieri</i>, with
+guidebooks; <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">carabinieri</i>, in pairs, resplendent in braided
+uniforms and cocked hats; the nervous Bersaglieri, with shining round
+hats and glossy cocks’-feather plumes; army officers in cloaks or
+bright blue guard-coats, fresh from vermouth at Aragni’s; Savoyards
+in steel helmets and gold crests; diplomats in silk hats and Prince
+Albert coats; and clericals by the hundreds. The clericals, indeed, may
+always be relied upon to supply an effective color-touch anywhere in
+Rome. They come along in fluttering groups of every hue: English and
+French seminarists in cassocks of black, Germans in scarlet, Scotch
+in purple, and Roumanians in orange and blue; it is diverting to see
+them raise their black beavers to one another with the quietest and
+most serious air imaginable. Solemn lay brethren shuffle past in sombre
+brown of Franciscan and Capuchin, or white of the cowled and tonsured
+Dominicans. Occasionally, along a side street, one passes slowly,
+absorbed in his breviary, like Don Abbondio in “I Promessi<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span> Sposi.”
+Rome abounds in shovel-hats, shaven heads, sandals, and hempen girdles.
+But you must not expect to see them all in a Corso <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">passeggiata</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Unless we have yielded too much to the blandishments along the way, we
+should be crossing the sunny, somnolent circle of the Piazza del Popolo
+and climbing the fountained and statue-set terraces of the Pincian
+Gardens as the first strains of the promenade concert usher in the
+hour of four. The spectacle that confronts us on the low, broad brow
+of the old hill is animated and brilliant. Hundreds of motor-cars,
+private carriages and hired cabs roll in a long, gay procession around
+the driveways, their occupants arrayed in the last word of Italian
+fashion, and a multitude of happy loiterers stroll leisurely in the
+mild afternoon sunshine along sylvan paths hedged with box or bordered
+with flowers, where long lines of marble portrait-busts of Italy’s
+dead immortals extend into the pleasant shade of groves of myrtles and
+fragrant acacias. What a contrast in occupation to the scenes that in
+olden days were enacted here—the luxury and splendor of the golden
+suppers that the war-worn Lucullus gave to Rome’s poets and artists;
+or the vicious and voluptuous orgies with which the vile Messalina
+indulged the depraved favorites of the Claudian court! Young Rome, this
+afternoon, has decked itself in its gayest raiment, and youth vies
+with youth in gallantries to the fashionable beauties who prefer the
+fascinating town, even in summer, to the listless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span> diversions of the
+country. “Visiting” goes on between carriage-parties, which is said to
+answer the social requirements of calls at the house. Mild refreshments
+are being served in a lively little café to which many repair when
+weary with lounging among the brilliant flowers and lovely foliaged
+paths; and groups ramble across the new viaduct and stroll among the
+sycamores and stone-pines of the neighboring Villa Borghese. The
+Pincian Gardens seem very formal and compact and precisely ornate as
+compared with our parks at home, but there is much more of sociability
+and comfort than is to be found Sunday afternoons in New York’s Central
+Park, for instance. That is probably because New York’s pedestrians
+are centred in the Mall to hear the band, or around the lakes to watch
+the boating, and all her carriage-folk are by themselves in the East
+Side Drive. The Pincian promenade mingles both classes into a great
+family party. It is a brilliant scene, but it must have been much more
+so in other days when the popes joined the company in the great glass
+coach drawn by six black horses in crimson trappings, and outriders and
+footmen flocked about them.</p>
+
+<p>One wonders whether Pius <abbr title="the tenth">X</abbr> does not sometimes think with a sigh of
+regret of the liberties of his early predecessors, as he paces the
+flowered garden paths of his voluntary prison and lifts his gentle,
+shining face toward these pleasant Pincian heights. How often will the
+memory recur to me of that mild and friendly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span> man, as once I saw him
+in the Vatican’s Court of the Pine, in his snowy robes and the little
+cap scarce whiter than his hair. I remember his only ornaments to have
+been the famous Fisherman’s ring, and a long gold chain about his
+neck from which a great crucifix was pendent. It was the occasion of
+a calisthenic drill given by a local orphan asylum for his Holiness’s
+special benefit. Each little athlete in gray was burning to do his
+very best in so notable a presence, and was, indeed, succeeding, with
+the glaring exception of the smallest of the band, whose eager efforts
+had resulted only in an uninterrupted series of comical mischances,
+to the infinite chagrin of himself and associates and the increasing
+amusement of the Pope. In due time the performance came to an end,
+and the boys were drawn up facing each other in a double line through
+which, attended by cardinals, chamberlains, and members of the Papal
+Guard, his Holiness passed extending his hand to be kissed. When he
+reached the diminutive and blushing blunderer, he halted his imposing
+train and laid his hand on the boy’s head and smoothed his hair and
+patted his cheek with affectionate tenderness, whispering the while an
+intimate message of good cheer, as though it were something strictly
+confidential between himself and that fatherless little waif whose face
+was shining with reverence and awe and whose eyes were full of happy
+tears. I am, I trust, as confirmed a Protestant as the next, but I
+confess that my heart<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> was bowed as well as my head as that white-robed
+figure turned, as it disappeared through a door of the Vatican, and
+raised a hand toward us in the sign of the cross.</p>
+
+<p>The marble parapet of the Pincio is, at this hour, a prime favorite
+among Roman loafing-places. As from an upper theatre box, one looks
+precipitously down into the great, peaceful, siesta-drugged circle
+of the Piazza del Popolo, the scene in other days of so much cruelty
+and often of so much happiness. The stone lions of the fountain spout
+patiently to the delighted observation of scores of playing children,
+and drowsy cabmen nod on the boxes of the long rank of waiting
+victorias. One may indulge to his fullest in moral reflections over the
+slender obelisk from the Heliopolis Temple to the Sun, upon which Moses
+himself may have gazed in days before Rome was thought of, and when the
+celestial consorts, Isis and Osiris, still waved their lotus sceptres
+and ruled the quick and the dead. Nineteen hundred years ago Nero,
+who should have begun blood-letting with himself instead of ending it
+there, was buried in this ground, and you are told how the evil spirits
+that haunted the accursed spot were not finally exorcised until yonder
+church of Santa Maria had been reared above his tomb. One will find it
+more agreeable to look across the piazza at the portal of the Flaminian
+Way and re-create the scenes of the triumphant entrance of the noble,
+hardy Trajan walking by the side of his fair and amiable wife.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span></p>
+
+<p>The elm-tops are rustling in the deep groves of the Villa Borghese,
+and the yellow Tiber, “too large to be harmless and too small to be
+useful,” slips swiftly between the yellow walls of its quays. To the
+mind’s eye, in the azure distance Mons Sacer is clear, and Tivoli and
+the Sabine Farm of Horace. Like the Archangel Michael on the Castle
+of Sant’ Angelo, the sun, too, begins to sheathe his sword, and its
+glitter throws a warm mantle over the shoulders of the marble angels
+on the bridge. Most conspicuously, as is proper, it lingers on the
+pale dome of St. Peter’s, touches into life the sculptured saints
+of the portico, and floods obelisk, fountains, and all that vast
+elliptical piazza toward which are extended the sheltering arms of
+Bernini’s colonnade. How fair, beneath that roof, are the dazzling
+marbles, shining tombs, sculptured effigies, and glowing mosaics! But
+fairer far is this prospect from the hill, of Rome in her soft coat
+of many colors, the velvety ruins of the Palatine, the stone-pines in
+sentinel stiffness down the distant Appian Way, the sunny piazzas, the
+sparkling fountains, and the verdure and bloom of the slopes of the
+Janiculum, under the cloudless blue of a soft Italian sky. <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ave, Roma
+eterna!</i> </p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_125">
+<img src="images/i_125.jpg" alt="" width="335" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PRAGUE">PRAGUE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A brooding</span>, stolid city is Prague; the sombre capital of a restless,
+feverish people. It is the hotbed and “darling seat” of all Bohemia;
+and Bohemia languishes for her lost independence as Israel did by the
+waters of Babylon. She does not, however, pine in hopeless despair like
+the Hebrews, but nourishes a keen expectation of regaining her lost
+estate, and grits her teeth, in the mean while, with fiery impatience.
+She points, and with reason, to the fact that the Slavs—Czechs,
+Slovaks, and Moravians—easily outnumber the Hungarians; yet Hungary
+is free, and she in bondage. And so Bohemia, for all her exterior
+of gracious courtesy, is bitter and hard at heart; a people of a
+passionate, thwarted patriotism; a people that has suffered and been
+degraded, but that has never for a moment forgotten. Prague is an
+expression of all this; in her sullen, gloomy architecture; in the
+persistence of national types and characteristics; and peculiarly in
+the wild, reckless Moldau, which visualizes the traditional, savage
+intolerance that is bred in the bone of the fatalistic Slav.</p>
+
+<p>There are too many daws about for Prague to wear<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> her heart on her
+sleeve, so while she bides her time she presents a smiling mask. It
+may sometimes be a rather weary smile, and the forests that engulf
+her are gloomy and sinister; but her skies are not always lowering
+and overcast, and the peace of her fatigue from the national struggle
+is profound. It is just this deep, brooding peace that appeals to the
+stranger within her gates; and along with it he senses here a wonderful
+charm and underlying subtility that invests this curious old city with
+a lambent play of the imagination.</p>
+
+<p>It was of Prague that Alexander von Humboldt said: “It is the most
+beautiful inland city I have ever seen.” And it must have been of some
+such spot that “R. L. S.” was mindful when he expressed the paradox
+that “any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is only
+in a few, and those highly favored, that we can pass a few hours
+agreeably.” Restfulness is surely one of the prime essentials of the
+“highly favored” few; and there is no restfulness at all comparable
+with that we feel in some venerated spot whose present hush and quiet
+is a reaction from its other days of fever and turmoil. One finds these
+qualities in Prague, whose calm and serenity seem doubly intense in
+contrast with its history of tumult and savagery and the hatred and
+violence that racked and convulsed it for hundreds of years. It has
+frequently been lightly disposed of as being an “out-of-the-way place”;
+but no place is more delightful than an “out-of-the-way” place, and
+particularly when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span> it has the natural and architectural beauty of this
+one, or has been the theatre of such unusual and stirring occurrences.</p>
+
+<p>Had we but one hour to spend in Prague we should certainly choose the
+charmed one between four and five o’clock of an afternoon. The sunshine
+is then most languid and golden, and the day declines slowly over
+the castled tops of the Hradschin-crowned slope, and the lengthening
+shadows of towers and turrets creep out on the river, and the copper
+domes and ruddy tiles of the Neustadt glow in bright spots against the
+darkling green of the wooded hillsides. If one does not then feel a
+profound and elevating sense of tranquillity and translating beauty, it
+will be because he has eyes to see yet sees not.</p>
+
+<p>Since Prague rests under the imputation of being “out of the way,”—and
+even Shakespeare set this inland kingdom down as “a desert country
+near the sea,” and lost his compass completely in the shipwreck in
+the “Winter’s Tale” with Antigonus exclaiming: “Our ship hath touch’d
+upon the deserts of Bohemia”; and a confused mariner replying, “Aye,
+my lord; and fear we’ve landed in ill time,”—we may, perhaps, be
+pardoned for observing that in general appearance it is a wooded
+valley traversed in its full length by a swift, turbulent river, which
+follows a northerly course excepting where it bends sharply to the
+east in the very heart of the city. This stream, the Moldau, rushes
+along<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span> as if in desperate haste to throw itself into the Elbe, and
+seems to have the one idea, as it dashes through Prague, of getting
+done with its business and on its way at the earliest moment possible.
+It has scoured its islands into ovals, slashed the rocky bases of the
+hills, and continually assailed its bridges and quays. But through all
+its exhibitions of ill humor the Praguers have indulgently condoned
+and even extolled it; it was only when the beloved and venerated
+Karlsbrücke fell a partial victim to its violence, a dozen years ago,
+that patience ceased to be a virtue and the unnatural marauder was
+comprehensively anathematized with all the sibilant fury of the hissing
+tongue of the Czech. Speed apart, there is little to complain of with
+the Moldau; it is broad and of a pleasant deep blue, and the beauty it
+supplies to the setting of the city is supplemented by the importance
+of its traffic, the amusements on its many little wooded islands, and
+the delights of its boating and bathing. In a word, it is a noble
+stream—and none the less Bohemian, perhaps, for being a little proud
+and head-strong.</p>
+
+<p>As the afternoon sun lies heavy over Prague one notes with delight how
+snugly the old city nestles along the river and up the hillsides of
+the valley, and with what a natural and comfortable air; not at all as
+though trying, as newer cities do, to shoulder its suburbs out of the
+way. It seems a perfect type of the mediæval town, with buildings of
+solid stone of an agreeable and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span> universal creamy tone, four-square
+and enduring. It abounds in quaint, high pitched roofs; in curious,
+turreted spires; in red tiles and green copper domes; and in objects of
+antique and archaic fascination. Shade trees are everywhere. Indeed,
+from the thickly wooded heights of the surrounding hills right down to
+the river quays the gray of the houses and the red and green of the
+roofs make beautiful color combinations with the feathery foliage.</p>
+
+<p>One stands on the old Karlsbrücke and looks upstream and there he
+sees the rocky heights of the Wyschehrad Hill on which the fair and
+wise Libussa reared her castle when she laid the foundations of the
+city, thirteen centuries ago, and which he will want to visit later to
+look over the fortifications and to study the glowing frescoes on the
+cloister walls of the Benedictine monastery of Emmaus. In the elbow of
+the Moldau, downstream, he will observe the old sections of Prague
+huddled together in cramped confusion, with no sign left of the ancient
+separating walls that once defined the original seven districts, though
+he is to learn, by and by, that the early names remain unchanged—the
+Aldstadt, and the Jewish Josephstadt, and around and above them the
+Neustadt, which, of course, from an American time-point, is really not
+“new” at all. On his left, along the river, he sees the Kleinseite
+spread out, and on the hillside above it that far-famed acropolis, the
+redoubtable Hradschin, with its dusty, barracks-like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> royal and state
+palaces, and the great bulk of the cathedral of St. Vitus rising out of
+it like some man-made mount. Such is the first bird’s-eye impression
+of Prague, set in its wooded slopes, stolid and softly colored.
+Later on one can scrape acquaintance with its rambling, flourishing,
+modern suburbs, to the eastward and downstream, and wrestle at his
+pleasure with such impressive nomenclature as Karolinenthal and
+Bubna-Holeschowitz.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_133">
+<img src="images/i_133.jpg" alt="" width="391" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">PRAGUE, THE CASTLE FROM THE OLD BRIDGE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Between four and five o’clock the visitor will find an especial
+pleasure in noting the activities that prevail in the several little
+green islands that fret the impetuous Moldau as it hurries through
+this “hundred-towered, golden Prague.” The dearest of these to the
+sentimental Czech is bright Sophien-Insel, that you could almost leap
+onto from the stone coping of the neighboring Kaiser-Franzbrücke. It
+always wears a gay and inviting appearance, with café tables set under
+fine old oaks, but precisely at four, summer afternoons, the leader of
+its military band lifts his baton and launches some crashing prelude,
+and the noisy company instantly stills and with nervously tapping
+fingers and glowing eyes abandons itself to that music passion which is
+the deepest and most intense expression of the Bohemian temperament.
+It gives the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dilettante</i>  a new conception of the power of this
+inspiring art to observe the significant and varying expressions that
+play over the faces of a Prague audience under its influence. He
+witnesses<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> then the profoundest stirring of the Slavic nature and the
+moving of emotional depths beyond the conception of the reserved and
+impassive Anglo-Saxon. Especially is this so when the music is of a
+national character, such as the “Ma Vlast” symphonic poems of Smetana,
+or a Slavic dance of Dvorak’s. These Bohemian masters, with their
+fellow countryman, Fibich, constitute a trinity that is reverenced in
+their native land to an extent that almost passes belief, and that has
+done so much in making Prague one of the foremost centres of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The music from the Sophien-Insel floats down the river to our
+vantage-point on Karlsbrücke, mellowed and softened, and contributes
+just the right pleasing note to the agreeable mood these picturesque
+surroundings excite. The ponderous, antique old structure on which
+we stand has the appearance of some full-page color illustration for
+a charming Middle-Age romance. For half a millennium it has dug its
+broad arches into the bottom of the Moldau, stoutly defiant of flood
+or storm. Its massive buttresses are crowned with heroic statues so
+deeply revered that pilgrimages are made by the faithful to pay their
+devotions before them. For a third of a mile this old veteran strides
+the stream, and at each end he lifts an amazing mediæval tower well
+worth a journey to stare at. These ponderous structures, weathered
+by centuries of storm to a rich brownish black, are pierced by a
+deep Gothic archway through which the street traffic pours all day.
+Their sides are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> decorated with colonnades and traceries, armorial
+bearings and statues of ancient heroes of the city, and their tops
+are incredible creations of slender turrets and of pointed roofs so
+desperately precipitate that they seem like long narrow paving-stones
+tilted end to end.</p>
+
+<p>Catholic legend and ceremonial run riot on the old bridge. The statues
+are almost altogether of a religious character, and two of them,
+the Crucifixion Group and the bronze one of St. John Nepomuc, are
+practically never passed without the sign of the cross and the raising
+of hat or cap; in the case of the latter the devout will touch the
+tablet that marks the spot from which he is said to have been cast
+into the river, and then kiss their fingers and bless themselves. For
+St. John Nepomuc, of all the holy martyrs, was Prague’s very own. The
+legend is dramatic. Father John was the queen’s confessor, five hundred
+years ago, and when he declined to oblige the king by revealing what
+the queen had told under the seal of the confessional, his Majesty had
+him summarily cast into the Moldau, from just where we are standing at
+the centre of this bridge. The result was far from the expectations
+of the king, for not only was the poor priest preserved from sinking,
+but—which is quite as hard to believe of so swift a stream as this—he
+actually remained floating for four days at the very spot where he
+fell, and five bright stars hung above him all the while! When they
+took him out he was dead, and to this extent only did the king succeed.
+As<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> was perfectly natural, the amazed Praguers could see nothing in
+all this but an astounding miracle; and when Catholicism had finally
+displaced the Protestantism that followed the Hussite wars for two
+hundred years, their clamor for the canonization of Father John
+eventually resulted in placing the name of St. John Nepomuc in the
+catalogue of Rome. Equipped with a saint all their own, they adroitly
+converted the statues of the Protestant John Huss, that stood here and
+there about town, into St. John Nepomucs by the simple expedient of
+adding a five-starred halo to each.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if to-day were the sixteenth of May, St. John Nepomuc’s special
+day, we should behold the greatest festival of all the year. An altar
+would be erected beside his statue, here on the bridge, and mass
+celebrated before enormous kneeling crowds. Bohemian peasants would
+flock into town from miles and miles around, in all the picturesque
+finery of the national dress, gala performances would be given at the
+theatres, an especial illumination of the city made at public expense,
+and fireworks displayed to-night on Schutzen-Insel. It would be an
+orderly celebration, too, for the Czechs are more fond of dancing than
+drinking; and religious enthusiasm would be practically universal, for
+Prague, which for two centuries was exclusively Protestant, now numbers
+at least nine Catholics out of every ten of its people.</p>
+
+<p>As we look about us this afternoon we derive a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span> vivid consciousness
+of being very far from home, set down in an environment that is, for
+Europe, oddly foreign and unfamiliar. The soft, sibilant prattle of
+the Czechish speech is heard on every hand, and the names on cars and
+corners are outlandish to us, with their profusion of consonants and
+curious accent marks like our o and v. One sees a great disproportion
+in numbers between the German and Czechish population; only thirteen
+to the hundred are said to be German, but in the opinion of Bohemians
+that is too many, for the stubborn struggle for the existence of the
+old national speech and spirit against the threatening usurpation
+of the Teutonic invaders is a real matter of life and death. As we
+watch the crowds throng along the bridge the prevalence of the Slavic
+type is very noticeable: short of body, heavy of head, and with high
+cheek bones and coarse features. The general expression is one of
+settled melancholy, bred of their peculiar fatalism. Having heard the
+“Bohemian Girl” and read the foundationless libels of popular French
+literature, one looks about for gypsies; he will be lucky if he finds
+one. Bohemia, as he should have known, is one of the leading industrial
+countries of Europe, and Prague is made up of hard-working, skillful
+mechanics. Energy and resolution are stamped on these serious, rugged
+faces; on the powerful men, the tall, strong women, and even on the
+little black-eyed children. And they can do many worthy things well:
+they market the country’s rich coal and iron deposits,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span> make garnets
+to perfection, and manufacture beet-sugar by thousands of tons. Who
+has not heard of Bohemian glass, or Pilsener beer? And shall we
+belittle the resourcefulness of Bohemia, with the prosperous resorts of
+Karlsbad and Marienbad well within the western boundary of the Böhmer
+Wald? If this does not convince, one has only to run over to Dresden,
+seventy-five miles away, which he can reach by rail in four hours at
+an outlay of but eight florins, and ask any one where the finest farm
+produce comes from and what section yields the best fruit and honey,
+butter and eggs, milk and cheese.</p>
+
+<p>If now we can manage to look away from the bridge and its crowds,
+we shall observe that the afternoon activities of the river-life of
+Prague are manifold and highly interesting. There is a prodigious
+bustling about of longshoremen on the fine, broad quays, and boats of
+many descriptions and diversified cargoes are laboriously struggling
+upstream or drifting guardedly down. From time to time huge, unwieldy
+rafts pass along to the din of vigorous shouting and hysterical
+warnings. Bathers at the riverside establishments are adding their
+share of laughter and frolic, their diversions watched with vast
+amusement by the afternoon idlers loitering along the embankments. On
+our right the shaded walks and trim lawns of the popular Rudolfs-Quai
+are comfortably filled with a leisurely company of promenaders and of
+nursemaids airing their charges. All this contributes an agreeable note
+of homeliness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span> and contentment and seems eminently in harmony with the
+prevailing serenity and peace of the surrounding groves. There is at
+hand a little chain footbridge which they call the Kettensteg, and in a
+beautiful clump of lindens at its end rise the sculptured porticoes of
+the classic Rudolfinum, Prague’s noble home of the arts and industries.
+Enter it, and you find whole halls devoted to the work of Bohemian
+artists, with the school of old Theodoric of Prague represented in
+surprising completeness, an entire cabinet filled with the engravings
+of that famous Praguer, Wenzel Hollar, and many of the most beautiful
+paintings of such celebrated Bohemians as Gabriel Max, Václav Brozǐk
+and Josef Mánes.</p>
+
+<p>With artistic bridges arching the river in whichever direction you
+look, with music and soft voices welling up from the gay islands, and
+with a full and virile life at cry along the quays, you find yourself
+about as far removed as possible from the atmosphere of Longfellow’s
+“Beleaguered City”:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">With the wan moon overhead,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">There stood, as in an awful dream,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The army of the Dead.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Assuredly, there is no “army of the dead” at this hour beside the
+Moldau, whatever there may be under the “wan moon” in a poet’s eye.
+On the contrary, there is an army of the living, a quarter-million of
+them, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span> it marches without resting, day in and day out, along the
+Graben and the stately Wenzels-Platz, and through the venerable Grosser
+Ring and the narrow, crooked alleys of old Josephstadt.</p>
+
+<p>Walk east across Karlsbrücke, pass under the Gothic arch of the
+somnolent Aldstadt Tower, with the stony statue of Karl <abbr title="the fourth">IV</abbr> on your
+left, and you will shortly emerge on the Grosser Ring and can settle
+the matter for yourself. This fantastic Ring is the oldest and most
+famous square of the city, still preserving its ancient appearance.
+You find it an irregular quadrilateral, surrounded by quaint, gloomy,
+colonnaded houses, churches, and dilapidated palaces. There towers
+in its centre a sombre memorial column, called the Mariensäule,
+commemorating Prague’s liberation from the Swedes at the close of
+the Thirty Years’ War. The very first thing to catch the eye is the
+singular Teynkirche—the old Gothic church where John Huss so often
+preached, where the astronomer Tycho Brahe lies entombed in red marble,
+and in whose shadows, through five centuries, many of the bloodiest
+events of the city had their inception and execution. The influence of
+Huss on the Europe of his day was so great and has continued so long
+that it is hard to realize that he had only reached his forty-sixth
+year when the Council of Constance sent him and his friend, Jerome of
+Prague, to the stake. The old Teynkirche, where he so often attacked
+the doctrines of Rome, still rears its battered and darkened<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> bulk
+from behind a melancholy row of colonnaded houses and gazes solemnly
+and patiently over them at the noisy Ring, its lofty spires curiously
+clustered with airy turrets like hornets’ nests on some old tree.
+Directly opposite, the modern Gothic Rathaus shoulders up to the
+moldering tower of its predecessor whose famous clock has delighted
+its thousands with the surprising things the automatic figures do
+when the hours and quarters roll around. Just at hand, a portion of
+the old Erkerkapelle still stands in excellent preservation, and you
+could not find more beautiful Gothic windows in all Prague, nor finer
+canopied saints nor more richly sculptured coats of arms. Before this
+building—a place of hideous history—the best blood of the city was
+spilled after the fall of Bohemian independence at the fateful battle
+of the White Hill, three centuries ago, when twenty-seven nobles
+were butchered here on the scaffold. A dozen years passed, and again
+blood soaked this earth, with the stony-hearted Wallenstein executing
+eleven of his chief officers for alleged cowardice at the battle of
+Lutzen. Prague still shows the palace of Wallenstein, and those of the
+other two famous generals of his period, Gallas and Piccolomini. The
+Clam-Gallas Palace is just at hand, in the Hussgasse, distinguished for
+its beautiful portal flanked with colossal caryatids and sculptured
+urns, and surmounted by a marble balustrade wrought with the perfection
+of life. A final note in the Old-World charm of the Grosser<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> Ring is
+contributed by the ancient Kinsky Palace, adjoining the Teynkirche,
+in the elaborate baroque architecture despised of Mr. Ruskin. People
+in the manner and seeming of to-day walk and talk, barter and sell
+under the nodding brows of these historic buildings, but the visitor
+stands among them unconscious of their noisy presence in the spell such
+storied surroundings cast on every phase of fancy and imagination.</p>
+
+<p>There is a peculiar fascination about aimless rambles in Prague. Modern
+improvements have come, of course, but many an old and rare landmark
+has been reverently preserved, with the result that you can scarcely
+turn a corner or cross a square without coming face to face with
+some fantastic and blackened architectural fragment that holds you
+spellbound with wonder and delight. Whole sections, indeed, are of such
+a character; as you would find were you to fare forth from the Grosser
+Ring and seek adventures by crossing the Kettensteg and invading the
+region beyond the Rudolfinum. With almost the suddenness of tumbling
+into a river you would find yourself groping, even at this bright hour
+of the afternoon, in the black and twisting mazes of the old Jewish
+Ghetto that still goes by the name of Josephstadt. Here you have at
+once all the detail and color of a romance of the crusades. Everything
+appears aged and eccentric. The time-weary, saddened, ramshackle houses
+project their upper stories feebly and seek to rest their wrinkled
+foreheads on one another; tortuous, winding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span> alleys that you can
+almost span with your outstretched arms reel giddily all ways from a
+straight line, plodding wearily uphill and sliding helplessly down. On
+all sides there seems to be a general feeling that nothing matters,
+that everything comes by accident or caprice. Over the frowzy heads of
+slovenly children quarreling in the doorways, glimpses are to be had of
+dark and filthy interiors, from which foul odors escape to the street.
+Long-coated, unkempt patriarchs of Israel lope solemnly by, with
+rounded shoulders and hands clasped behind; and if you follow in their
+wake you will sooner or later arrive at a curious, melancholy Rathaus
+that is a rare jumble of architectural orders and has an extraordinary
+steeple that might once have done time on a Chinese temple. This very
+inclusive structure, persisting in its oddities to the end, makes a
+great point of staring down at the gaping crowds out of a big belfry
+clock that has one dial Hebrew and one Christian. But a single marvel
+is as nothing in this old wonderland where, as Alice would have
+remarked, things become “curiouser and curiouser.” If your eyes popped
+at the Rathaus what will they do at the gaunt, barnlike synagogue next
+door! Here is the thing that every visitor to Prague goes straight to
+see. Its early history is lost in legends, but you will be disposed to
+credit them all—even to that one about the Prague Jews fleeing from
+Jerusalem to escape the persecutions of Titus—once you have seen its
+doleful walls and breakneck roof, and have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span> passed through the narrow
+black doorway into that shadowy tomb of an interior. Brass lamps
+depend by long chains from the smoky ceiling, but they only intensify
+the gloom with their feeble light and deepen the feeling of creepy
+depression. Visitors are told that during the horrors of the Hussite
+wars this black hole was literally packed with the bloody corpses of
+Jews and that, in a bitter spirit of defiance, no attempt was made for
+three hundred years to efface the frightful stains. Little wonder that
+the Prague Jews evolved out of their hatred an ancient malediction that
+ran: “May your head be as thick as the walls of the Hradschin, your
+body grow as big as the city of Prague; may your limbs wither away to
+birds’ claws, and may you flee around the world for a thousand years!”</p>
+
+<p>It is like escaping from a sick-bed to come out of this chamber of
+horrors and cross the street to the quiet and hush of the wonderful
+old Ghetto cemetery. Here we have another of the “sights” of the
+Josephstadt. In the refreshing coolness of its elder-trees one looks
+about on as extraordinary a three acres as can be found anywhere in
+all Europe. The Jews insist that they have buried here for twelve or
+fourteen hundred years, and inscriptions can be found that date back
+at least half that far. By the simple process of spreading new layers
+of earth, this plot has been packed with graves six deep; and all
+that was accomplished a hundred and fifty years ago, the cemetery not
+having been in use since the middle of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span> eighteenth century. The
+closeness of the black, mossy tombstones, and their toppled and huddled
+look, suggest the troubled shouldering of some gigantic, ghoulish mole
+at work deep down in the horror-crowded darkness underground. The
+ancient tribal insignia of Israel are found graven on these tottering
+slabs,—the Hands of Aaron, the Cup of Levi, the Double Triangle of
+David, the Stag, the Fish, etc.,—and here and there you come across
+those little piles of stones heaped on graves that mark a Jewish act of
+reverence for the resting-place of some long-buried ancestor.</p>
+
+<p>Hold to a generally southern direction in your afternoon stroll through
+the narrow Ghetto alleys, and shortly you will meet with a fine reward
+in the shape of a face-to-face contemplation of one of Prague’s most
+cherished antiquities, the Pulverturm. They may have once stored powder
+here, as the name implies, or they may not; but almost anything looks
+to have been possible to this sturdy, brown survivor of the Middle
+Ages, under whose broad Gothic archway the twentieth-century crowds
+are passing day and night. Set solidly down in the thickest stream
+of traffic, it has the look of those unconquerable obstructions that
+have to be tunneled through. It looms above you, a great, dark, dusty
+mass, out-of-time in every particularity of design and decoration.
+Stubbornness and defiance are expressed in every line; and with its
+atmosphere of drowsy aloofness and mystery there is such an element
+of loneliness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span> among such modern surroundings that one could almost
+believe he sometimes hears the old veteran sigh. Certainly you would
+say it is brooding over memories centuries dead, so incongruous and
+distrait is its seeming, so anachronous are its whimsical turrets,
+fantastic roof, statues, arms, and sculptured traceries. This
+impression of isolation is enhanced as one reflects that the most
+ultra-modern of Prague’s new buildings all stand within easy range,
+could one of the Pulverturm’s ancient archers take up a position in any
+of those lofty turrets and wing an arrow from his stout crossbow toward
+what quarter of the heavens he chose.</p>
+
+<p>When you have passed under the arch of the Pulverturm, you have entered
+the Graben, and so reached the business heart of the city. The Graben
+has nothing to-day to suggest the “Ditch” that its derivative source
+implies, unless you fancifully regard it as a moat of the modern
+commercial ramparts. On the contrary, it presents a busy array of all
+the leading hotels, shops, restaurants, and cafés. Overhead-trolley
+cars splutter along it, and you see gray stone buildings of irregular
+roof-lines with skylight dormers in the tiles, and Venetian blinds in
+the windows, narrow sidewalks decorated in mosaic designs, and active
+throngs of strong-featured men, and bareheaded, vigorous women whose
+chief pride of dress concerns itself with capacious aprons elaborately
+embroidered. Were you to visit the second-story cafés, whose gay
+window-boxes look so inviting from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span> street, you would find games of
+chess and checkers in progress at this hour, and more than one merchant
+who had stolen from his shop to have a look at the “Prager Tagblatt”
+over a glass of Pilsener or “three fingers” of the plum brandy they
+call <i lang="sk" xml:lang="sk">slivovitz</i>  or a dram of <em>tshai</em>—which is tea and
+rum—or a cup of <em>tee</em>—which is just plain tea and cream. Coffee
+and chocolate, of course, would be found in general demand.</p>
+
+<p>One passes out of the Graben into the fine boulevard of the
+Wenzelsplatz, and at once exchanges bustle and uproar for the quiet
+and dignity of the most beautiful and stately avenue of the city. It
+is broad and well-paved, with buildings of elaborate design, with
+shop fronts protected by bright awnings and with fine shade-trees
+every few yards along its entire length. At the corner of the Stadt
+Park, one finds a beautiful cascade fountain, and beside it a noble
+building which is the centre of all that is best and most intense in
+the new movement for the reviving and vitalizing of the national spirit
+among Bohemians—the new Bohemian Museum. Were you to enter it you
+would doubtless be astonished to see how many souvenirs of Bohemian
+history have already been assembled there,—autographs and documents,
+ancient musical instruments, art objects, flails of the Hussites, and
+scientific collections. Such is the intellectual Bohemia of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>From this pleasant stroll one wends his way back to the Karlsbrücke,
+and as he passes the buildings that still<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span> remain of the ancient
+famous university, thoughts are kindled of the wonderful renown this
+institution had, six centuries ago, when it was easily the foremost
+educational institution of the world. Fifteen thousand students, from
+every quarter of the earth, gathered to hear its celebrated savants,
+and the revels and achievements of those days have gone down in prose
+and rhyme. Five thousand students still attend, two thirds of them
+Czechs and the others German; but the revelry of to-day is largely the
+bitter and bruising encounters that are continually arising between
+these conflicting hot-heads. The intellectual impulse is strong in
+Prague. It has poly-technic institutes, art schools, and learned
+societies, and one of the most famous conservatories of music in the
+whole of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The west bank of the Moldau, the Kleinseite district, was royalty’s
+region in the olden time when Bohemian kings and queens dwelt in the
+huge Hradschin on the ridge of the hill. Seen from the Karlsbrücke,
+toward five o’clock, the long slope rises toward the declining sun
+with many more suggestions, even now, of the pomp and circumstance
+that have departed than of the modernism that has taken their place.
+There is a dreary and saddening array of closed and boarded palaces,
+arcaded and many-windowed, whose owners are rich and powerful Bohemian
+nobles with a preference for the gayeties and frivolities of the court
+life of Vienna. One regards with especial interest the long, rambling
+one of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span> Wallenstein, to make room for which one hundred houses had to
+be torn down, where this rival of royalty retired in the interval of
+imperial disfavor and held magnificent court with hundreds of followers
+and attendants. Among the many chambers of that great honeycomb was
+one equipped as an astrological cabinet—for Wallenstein always had
+faith in his star. How vividly it recalls the Schiller dramas and the
+operations of the uncanny Ceni! “Such a man!” exclaims a character at
+the conclusion of “Wallensteins Tod.” Born a Protestant, he well-nigh
+became their exterminator; turned Jesuit, the Jesuits distrusted and
+hated him. With his sword he made and unmade kings and carved out
+principalities for himself—and yet he was but fifty-one years old at
+the time of his assassination!</p>
+
+<p>Like an aged soldier nodding in his armchair in the sun, the
+Wallenstein Palace, once passion-rocked and treachery-haunted, basks
+this afternoon in an atmosphere of the intensest calm and peace.
+To ramble through it is to learn history from a participant. One
+courtyard, in particular, is so serene and lovely as to be really
+unforgettable. One entire side of this enclosure is a lofty, echoing
+<em>loggia</em> three stories high, with arching spans for a roof
+supported on graceful, towering columns. Within the <em>loggia</em>
+are heavy sculptured balustrades, and a broad flight of marble steps
+flanked by huge stone urns leads to a beautiful open space of soft
+lawns bordered with simple flowers. It was a favorite resort of
+Wallenstein’s,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span> and he called it his <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">sala terrina</i>. In its
+present mellow and half-deserted beauty it is a place for a poet to
+dream away a life in.</p>
+
+<p>Staring gloomily down on the Kleinseite, and set solidly far above it
+on a precipitous hill, the rugged old Hradschin, Prague’s acropolis,
+warms into mild ruddy tones in the afternoon sun. I have said it
+reminds one of a barracks, such an enormous, rambling affair as it
+is; though its commanding situation and impressive proportions would
+immediately suggest to a stranger some more consequential employment
+in other days. Undoubtedly it is the most striking feature of Prague.
+One might think it a solid architectural mass, as seen from the
+Karlsbrücke, but on closer inspection it resolves itself into a series
+of separate structures falling into irregular groups, but which, taken
+together, composed the setting of the imperial court during the long
+period of Bohemia’s independence. That splendid fragment, the vast
+cathedral of St. Vitus, supplies a worthy centrepiece; and is full of
+interest, too, with its rich Gothic windows, chapel walls set with
+precious stones, marble tombs of the Bohemian kings, and the wonderful
+silver monument to St. John Nepomuc. Indeed, the whole Hradschin
+abounds in rich surprises. Such, for instance, is the venerable church
+of St. George, awkward and archaic, which has stood for nine hundred
+years and is the sole memorial in Bohemia of the earliest period of
+Romanic architecture. Every one, of course, hurries<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span> to see the rude
+royal palace of the Hofburg, on the edge of an adjacent steep hill,
+from the windows of whose Kanzlei Zimmer the Imperial Councillors were
+“defenestrated” and the Thirty Years’ War, in consequence, precipitated
+upon the troubled states of Europe. And then there is the archbishop’s
+palace, across the quadrangle from the Hofburg, in whose courtyard the
+church authorities impotently burned the two hundred Wycliffe books
+that John Huss had loaned them with the challenge to read and, if they
+could, refute. Two grim towers on the eastern extremity, the Daliborka
+and the Black Tower, have no end of creepy legends of tortures and
+prison horrors. The former takes its name from a romantic knight,
+Dalibor, who is said to have been long confined there and of whom and
+his solacing violin we hear at pleasant length in Smetana’s opera of
+that name. One of the most curious sights of the Hradschin is the low,
+drawn-out Loretto church, with a maximum of frontage and a minimum
+of depth, like city seminaries for young ladies. Among the red tiles
+of its steep roof, giant stone saints perform miracles of precarious
+footing, and out of the centre of the façade, on a base of colossal
+spirals, rises an antique belfry spire set with domes and turrets
+and bearing aloft a huge clock dial like a burnished shield. Surely,
+somewhere in this Hradschin-wonderland occurred the unrecounted events
+of that much-interrupted narrative of the “King of Bohemia and his
+Seven Castles,” which Trim tried so hard to tell to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span> Uncle Toby Shandy;
+and may we not be confident that the charming Prince Florizel, whose
+strange adventures Stevenson has so gracefully recounted, once lived
+and courted perils in these romantic surroundings!</p>
+
+<p>It is to be hoped that every visitor will have more than one hour in
+Prague; and then, of course, he will want to go up to the Hradschin
+and loiter through and about it at his leisure. He will find large and
+beautiful gardens where he can rest under noble trees and enjoy an
+inspiring view of the city in the pleasant companionship of statuary
+and fountains. When he has exhausted this viewpoint he can secure quite
+another from the colonnaded verandas of the Renaissance Belvedere; or,
+perhaps better still, he will journey out to the picturesque Abbey of
+Strahow, embowered in blooming orchards that are vocal with blackbirds,
+and from its yellow stuccoed walls look down on the dense forests of
+the Laurenzberg sweeping in billowy green to the very banks of the
+Moldau.</p>
+
+<p>At this hour a sharp point of light, seen from the observation tower
+on the summit of the Hasenberg, marks the location of a little white
+church on a distant hilltop—and when you have been told all about
+what happened there at the fatal battle of the White Hill you will
+have listened to the bitterest chapter in the whole history of Bohemia
+and will know how the national life of this kingdom gasped itself out,
+three centuries ago, in the panic and rout of the “Winter King’s”
+ill-managed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span> soldiery before the fierce infantry of Bavaria. There fell
+the state won by the flails of a fanatical peasantry whose sonorous
+war-hymn, “Ye Who Are God’s Warriors,” had so often struck terror into
+the ranks of the finest armies of Europe. Those were the men whom
+the furious Ziska led—Ziska, the squat and one-eyed, the friend and
+avenger of Huss; “John Ziska of the Chalice, Commander in the Hope
+of God of the Taborites.” Such was the terror in which this dread
+chieftain was held by his foes that they feared him even after his
+death and declared that his skin had been stretched for drum-heads to
+summon his followers on to victory.</p>
+
+<p>Since the battle of the White Hill there has been little for Prague in
+the way of war except sieges and captures; and it has mattered little
+to her whether it was Maria Theresa come to be crowned, or Frederick
+the Great come to destroy, or the Swedes of Gustavus Adolphus come
+to plague and offend. Suffering has been her regular portion. During
+the Thirty Years’ War alone, Bohemia’s population declined from four
+millions to fewer than seven hundred thousand.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger on the Karlsbrücke will turn from thoughts of Ziska’s
+peasants to regard with increased interest the occasional specimen
+of the countryman who strides past along the bridge with no
+embarrassment at appearing in the streets of his capital in the costume
+of his nation. Behold him in his high boots, tight buff trousers,
+well-embroidered, blue bolero jacket with many buttons,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span> broad lapels
+and embroidered cuffs, his soft shirt puffed out like a pigeon, and
+the jaunty Astrachan cap cocked to one side. And there, too, marches
+his wife; boots laced high, bodice bright and abbreviated, petticoats
+short and broad and covered by a wide-bordered apron, her arms bare to
+the shoulders, and her headdress of white linen very starchy and stiff.
+Sometimes one passes wearing a hat that suggests Spain, but he, too, as
+they all do, wears the tight trousers and the close-fitting knee boots.
+In time one learns to distinguish the Slovaks and Moravians by their
+long, sleeveless white coats, tight blue trousers, and white jackets
+with lapels and cuffs embroidered in red.</p>
+
+<p>One hears many interesting things about these peasants. Throughout
+the year, it is said, they fare frugally on black bread and a cheese
+made of sheeps’ milk, to which is added an occasional trout from the
+mountain streams. The great age some of them attain speaks well for the
+diet. Strangers who go up into the hills to stalk chamois and have a
+go at the big game come back with surprising stories of the inherited
+deference that is still paid in the country to caste. They will tell
+you that the peasant still kisses the hand of the lord of the soil.
+The Praguer thinks highly of his country brother, though he finds a
+vast amusement in observing his rustic antics when he comes to town on
+St. John Nepomuc’s Day and shuffles about the streets, wide-eyed and
+gaping, after the manner of <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">rus in urbe</i>  the world over.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span></p>
+
+<p>Curious stories are told of peasant customs. Christmas is their day
+of days, and preparations for its proper observance are made long in
+advance. They believe it to be a season when evil spirits are powerless
+to injure and may even be made to aid. When the great day arrives, the
+cottages are scrupulously cleaned, fresh straw laid on the earthen
+floor, and the entire household assembled for a processional round
+of the outbuildings. In the course of this ceremonial parade, beans
+are carefully dropped into cracks and chinks of the buildings, with
+elaborate incantations for protection against fires. Bread and salt
+are offered to every animal on the place. The unmarried daughters are
+sprinkled with honey-water to insure them faithful and sweet-natured
+husbands. The family drink of celebration is the plum-distilled
+<i lang="sk" xml:lang="sk">slivovitz</i>.</p>
+
+<p>What effective use the great national composers of Bohemia—Smetana,
+Dvorak, and Fibich—have made of the native melodies and costumes!
+Smetana, a friend and protégé of Liszt,—the master utilizer of
+Hungarian folk-themes,—was determined that Bohemia, too, should
+have music of a distinctively national character; and in his eight
+operas and six symphonic poems, as well as in his beautiful stringed
+quartette, the “Carnival of Prague,” he abundantly realized his
+ambition. There is no more popular opera played in Prague to-day than
+his “Bartered Bride.” One hears a great deal of Smetana in talking
+with the people of this city; of his poverty and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span> sadness, his final
+deafness, and of how, when fame at last crowned him so completely, he
+was dying in an asylum here. Music is a favorite topic of conversation
+in Prague. A violin player in one of the local theatre orchestras was
+no less a person than the great Dvorak, a pupil of Smetana’s; and he,
+too, added to Bohemian musical glory with his Slavonic rhapsodies and
+dances and the splendid overture that he constructed on the folk-melody
+“Kde Domov Muj.” There was a sort of Bach-like foundation for all these
+composers in the early litanies of the talented Bishop of Prague. The
+Czech temperament finds its natural expression in music. It is even
+insisted that their most popular movement, the polka, was invented by a
+Bohemian servant girl.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly there has been no lack of beautiful legendary material on
+which to construct effective compositions. These traditional stories
+are all full of sadness and superstition, and they always revolve about
+simple, natural elements—the rain, the mountains, the valleys, ghosts,
+and wild hunters, and, above all, that most recurrent and universal of
+themes, love.</p>
+
+<p>Could we win favor with some old Praguer this afternoon and entice him
+into the sunny corner of Karl <abbr title="the fourth">IV</abbr>’s monument place, beside the bridge,
+we should close out our hour with many a captivating and romantic
+story that would alone have made our visit well worth while. Such, for
+example, is the legend of the “Spinning Girl.” Deserted by her lover,
+she wove a wonderful shroud<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span> threaded with moonbeams, and in this she
+was buried, and by its magic she appeared to him on his wedding night
+and lured him to leap to his death in the river. And there is the story
+of the “Wedding Shirt”: A girl implores the Virgin either to let her
+die or restore her absent lover who, unknown to her, has been dead some
+time. The Virgin bows from the holy picture, and forthwith the pallid
+lover appears and conducts his sweetheart by a midnight journey to the
+spot where his body lies buried. Thereupon ensues a desperate struggle
+by fiends and ghouls to capture the soul of the girl, who is finally
+rescued by the interposition of the Virgin to whom in her terror she
+appeals. The wedding shirts that she had brought as her bridal portion
+are found scattered in fragments by the sinister spirits on the
+surrounding graves. The flight of the maid and her ghostly lover is
+vividly depicted at length, and is expressed, in translation, by such
+lurid lines as—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“O’er the marshes the corpse-lights shone,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Ghastly blue they glimmered alone.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the most romantic of these legends is the “Golden
+Spinning-Wheel.” A king loses his way while hunting and stops for a
+drink at a peasant’s cottage. There he finds a marvelously beautiful
+girl, to whom he eagerly offers himself in marriage. This girl is an
+orphan, with a stepmother and stepsister who are cruel and jealous.
+Under pretense of accompanying her to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> king’s castle they lure
+her into a black forest and slay her, taking great pains to conceal
+her identity by removing and carrying with them her eyes, hands,
+and feet. They then proceed to the castle and the wicked daughter
+successfully impersonates the good one, whom she closely resembles.
+Seven days of wedding festivities ensue, at the end of which the king
+is called away to the wars. In the mean while a mysterious hermit—a
+heavenly messenger in disguise—takes up the dead body in the forest,
+dispatches his lad to the castle and secures the eyes, hands, and feet
+by bartering for them a golden spinning-wheel, a golden distaff, and a
+magic whirl. Thus equipped, he miraculously restores the girl to life
+and limb. When the king returns from the wars he invites his false
+bride to spin for him with her new golden wheel, and forthwith the
+magic instrument sings aloud the whole miserable story. The furious
+king rushes to the forest, finds his real sweetheart, and installs her
+in his castle, while the murderers are mutilated as she had been, and
+cast to the wild wolves.</p>
+
+<p>It may be thought that I have gone somewhat out of my allotted way in
+taking such notice as I have of the superstitions, customs, and music
+passion of the Bohemians, but I cannot believe that a satisfactory
+idea of Prague can be had in this, or any other hour, without some
+conception of the fundamental traits that so powerfully sway this
+people. For the real significance of the city lies deeper than its
+surface-showing of wooded<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span> hillsides sown with quaint buildings and
+a broad blue river rushing under many bridges; it is its peculiar
+raciness of the soil that underlies the Czech’s mad devotion to his
+capital. Expressing, as only Prague does, so much that is dear and
+beautiful to him, it centres in itself the most burning and passionate
+interests of the race. Without some knowledge of this desperate
+attachment one would fail utterly to grasp the force and truth of such
+a fine observation as Mr. Arthur Symons has made on the devotion of the
+Bohemian to this city: “He sees it, as a man sees the woman he loves,
+with her first beauty; and he loves it, as a man loves a woman, more
+for what she has suffered.”</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_161">
+<img src="images/i_161.jpg" alt="" width="314" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="SCHEVENINGEN">SCHEVENINGEN</h2>
+
+<p class="center">5 P.M. TO 6 P.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nurtured</span> in the salt sadness of the sea, Scheveningen is a Whistler
+nocturne. Its prevailing and distinctive tones are neutral and elusive.
+There are, of course, days when the sun is as clear and powerful here
+as elsewhere, but more often it is obscured; then the sky becomes
+pearly, the sea opalescent, the shore drab and dun. Presently a thin
+fog drifts in, or vapors steal over the trees from the inland marshes,
+and all tints are rapidly neutralized into a common dimness of that
+vague and sentimental mistland so dear to the heart of the painter.
+This is the characteristic suspended color note of the average day at
+Scheveningen. It harmonizes to perfection with the sentiment of the
+environment and invests the region with a marvelous charm—peculiar,
+distinctive, and of the finest dignity.</p>
+
+<p>The power of Scheveningen’s attraction, the force of its appeal,
+lies largely in its grim aloofness and self-sufficiency. It is
+unsympathetic, discouraging. It consistently dominates its visitors,
+and, indeed, with an easy insolence and indifference. Wealth and
+fashion may abide with it for a few days, under tolerance, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span> the
+impression of the temporary and migratory character of their sojourn
+is always present. Undistracted, the fierce and gaunt sea assails
+the stark and surly shore, and the grim fishermen stand by and have
+their toll of both. Of the presence of the strangers they are all but
+unaware. In a brief day the incongruous invaders will have gone, but
+this relentless warfare will continue unabated. All the way from Helder
+to the Hook glistening seas will hiss over the flat beaches, snarling
+and biting at the shoulders of the dunes. All through the long, bitter
+winter, without an instant’s intermission, the struggle will go on. It
+is, consequently, of the very heart of the charm of the place that one
+has the feeling of intruding on battle; of tolerated propinquity to
+Titanic contenders.</p>
+
+<p>Loafing at Scheveningen is the apotheosis of idleness. The strong wind
+stimulates, the broad beaches delight, the solemn sea inspires. To
+this must be added the sense of strong contrasts. It emphasizes the
+impression of having dropped, for a time, out of the familiar monotony
+of Life’s treadmill; of being away from home; of both resting and
+recreating. It is present to the eyes in the eloquent disproportion
+between the vast Kurhaus and the diminutive homes of the villagers;
+in the incongruity of Parisian finery invading the savage haunts of
+the gull and the curlew. In the novel and bizarre activities of the
+fisher-folk, as in their theatrical surroundings as well, one finds
+just the right touch of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span> picturesque and the unfamiliar to complete
+the full realization of <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">dolce far niente</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of the fabled monsters of the wild North Sea the imaginative man will
+believe he sees one certain survivor in that languid sea-serpent of
+a pier—the “Jetée Königin Wilhelmina”—that stretches its delicate
+length a quarter mile over the waves from off the drab sand dunes of
+Scheveningen. Its pavilion-crowned head snuggles flatly on the water.
+In the afternoon and evening, when its orchestra is playing, one
+fancies the monster is actually singing. At five o’clock, precisely,
+we have its last drowsy utterance as it drops off into a three-hours’
+nap—quite as Fafner, in the opera, yawns at Alberich and mutters
+“lasst mich schlafen!” It must be admitted it is a highly pleasing song
+he sings,—a Waldteufel waltz, more than likely,—and we come in time
+to recognize in it the closing number of the <em>matinée musicale</em>.
+And then, like Jonah’s captor, he wearies of his living contents;
+and we see them emerge by hundreds, scathless and unafraid, gay with
+parasols and immaculate of raiment, and pick their way leisurely along
+his back until they have rejoined their friends in the voluble company
+that crowds the cafés of the Kurhaus. In a moment more the abandoned
+monster is fast asleep; which, by a familiar association of ideas, is
+a sign to the multitudes on the beaches that surf-bathing ends in just
+one hour.</p>
+
+<p>Forthwith, there is a great bustling all along the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span> shore side of the
+broad boulevard they call the “Standweg.” Bathers pick themselves up
+regretfully from sunbaths in the soft, powdery sand and trot down
+for a final dip in the surf, and those already in hasten to convert
+pleasure into work with increased energy and enthusiasm. To all such
+the implacable watchman shall come within the hour and beckon them out
+with stern and remorseless gestures, and the curious little wagons they
+call bath-cars will engulf each in turn and trundle them up out of the
+water, while the nervous old women who look after the bathing-suits
+will hover about with anxious eyes and lay violent hands on the
+dripping and discarded garments.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_167">
+<img src="images/i_167.jpg" alt="" width="422" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">SCHEVENINGEN BEACH</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And now a tremendous clamor arises from all the little Holland
+children, who, from early morning, have been indulging the national
+instinct for dike-building and surrounding their mothers’ beach-chairs
+with scientific sand-bulwarks against the imaginary encroachments of
+the sea. For lo! their nurses approach, wonderful in white streamers
+and golden head-ornaments, and visions of the odious ante-prandial
+toilet rise like North Sea fogs in every youngster’s eye until even
+dinner itself appears abhorrent. Vagabond jugglers run through their
+final tricks, fold their carpets and steal away. Itinerant peddlers
+redouble their efforts and retire disgusted or jubilant as Fortune
+may have hidden or shown her face. More than ever does the sea front
+take on the appearance of a long apiary, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span> the hundreds of
+tall, shrouded beehives of beach-chairs emptying themselves of their
+comfortable occupants and being bundled by bee-men in white linen
+to safety for the night. And of all the odd sights of Scheveningen
+certainly no other will remain longer in mind than this curious,
+huddled colony of beach-chairs. What a pleasing and cheerful spectacle!
+Thronging the shore for quite a mile they contribute to the local
+picture decidedly its most jolly and fantastic feature. Between the
+beach-chairs and the boulevard there is a picket line of prim little
+peaked white tents, with the top of each precisely matching all the
+others in an edging of stiff, woodeny scallops; now that the flaps are
+thrown back and the sides rolled up, we see tables and chairs inside,
+with evidence of recent and jovial occupancy.</p>
+
+<p>To the eye of a man taking his comfort at the pretty little Café de
+la Plage on the Kurhaus terrace, all this bustle and late afternoon
+animation is bound to prove decidedly diverting. The broad, paved
+plazas that lie like carpets between him and the dunes are steadily
+filling with a considerable proportion of the thirty thousand
+Hollanders and Germans who summer here, and acquaintances are
+exchanging civilities and joining and taking leave of little groups
+in a way to make the general picture a brilliant, restless, and
+bewildering interweaving of color. As the open-air tables are filling,
+the activity of the waiters approaches hysteria, and the verandas
+and saloons of the ponderous Kurhaus<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span> begin to hum with the advent
+of the evening guests. Copies of “Le Courrier de Schéveningue” pass
+from hand to hand as the curious scan the lists of the latest arrivals
+or look over the various musical programmes of the evening. Out on
+the terraces, the ornate little newspaper kiosks attract groups of
+loiterers and gradually take on the character of social centres, and
+as these companies increase, one thinks of stock exchanges and the
+rallying about the trading standards. The matinée at the Seinpost
+concludes and out troops its audience to swell the human high tide.
+Bright bits of color are afforded by the blue uniforms and yellow
+facings of Holland infantrymen dotted here and there in the press. It
+is odd to see the usually arid and monotonous dunes grow brilliant with
+an artificial blossoming of fashionable millinery, where by nature
+there is nothing better than a scraggy growth of stringy heather, a
+little rosemary and broom, or the dry stem of the “miller.”</p>
+
+<p>It is at this hour, when “the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,”
+that the stolid natives array themselves and sally forth, like Delft
+tiles come to life, to the amused amazement of the visitors. Your
+Scheveningen man is wont to go about his duties, during the day,
+flopping vigorously in vivid red knickerbockers, voluminous as sails
+and quite as crudely patched; but when he makes a point of toilet
+he appears in gray homespun, the knickerbockers cut from the same
+pattern as the red ones, but there is a jacket closed up to the chin
+with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span> two rows of large buttons, a red handkerchief twisted about
+the neck, a small cap with a glazed peak, and, of course, the wooden
+<i lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">klompen</i>. Such a display richly deserves attention, but what
+can the poor man expect when his wife appears in her full regalia!
+She, too, is shod with <i lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">klompen</i>,—though you have to take that
+on faith in view of the dozen or two of petticoats that balloon above
+them,—and her waist is a gay butterfly of variegated embroidery, while
+her headgear is about the most incredible thing conceivable. You might,
+at a distance, mistake them for bishops with their mitres tilted back
+at a rakish angle. Nor is it always of the one pattern. Usually it is
+a sort of long white cap of linen, embroidered at the edges; and the
+wearer adds a touch of coquetry in the shape of a long curl hanging at
+either side. But not infrequently you see a formidable contrivance of
+vastly more consequence; it consists, first, of a skullcap of polished
+gold or silver, technically known as a <i lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">hoofdijzer</i>, pierced at
+the top for ventilation and cut to leave room for the exposure of the
+forehead, and over this is drawn an elaborate cape of lace, with gold
+ornaments of spirals and squares dangling over the ears. This triumph
+of millinery never fails to elicit cries of delight from feminine
+visitors, or to set mere man to chuckling. It is most likely to form
+a part of the impressive gear of the nurses from the provinces, who
+have more money for such uses than the wives of the fishermen; and
+the things that are told to newcomers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span> as to the significance of this
+or that ornament is the boldest advantage ever taken of innocent
+credulity. They undertook to tell me that you could distinguish between
+married, single, and engaged women by glancing at the ornaments—I
+wonder if you can! It is said that parents present their daughters with
+this headdress on the day of their confirmation; and that it is a fine
+sight to behold the array of them at kermesstime with their wearers,
+six or eight abreast, arm in arm, rushing down the streets in the odd
+dances peculiar to those festivals, droning monotonous tunes.</p>
+
+<p>To my way of thinking the unflagging industry of the Scheveningen women
+is a matter of quite as much note. One seldom sees them without their
+knitting, even when they are recreating, and as they stroll along,
+laughing and chatting together, their fingers, all unnoticed by them,
+are flashing with extraordinary speed like things of an independent
+volition. Many of the women wear no sleeves and take great pride in
+their strong, round arms; and this, I am told, is the case even in
+winter when they are cracked and purple from exposure to the cold.</p>
+
+<p>The faces of the elder fisher-folk are studies in wrinkles. Their
+eyes are brave and quizzical, but with a certain settled hardness,
+not perhaps to be unlooked-for in men and women who come of a stock
+that for five hundred years has forced even the savage North Sea to
+yield them a livelihood. They show next to nothing of humor,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span> but
+rather a stern and weary hopelessness. Strong faces are these, hard,
+weather-beaten faces, but eloquent of tenacity and desperate courage.
+They have been called “the most poetic and original of all Hollanders.”
+They are grave, dignified, and self-reliant; and as they pass you by
+they show their invariable courtesy in a bow and a quiet “Goe ’n Dag.”
+One has only to see them to feel the propriety and justification of the
+boast in their national song:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Wilhelmus van Nassouwe,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Ben ick van Duijtschen Bloedt!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fishermen naturally suggest ships, and if you glance down the beach
+you will usually see several of them drawn up to the edge of the
+water, with the red, white, and blue of Holland at the masthead.
+During the mid-summer season the fishing-fleet is away on the cruise
+for red herring off the coasts of Scotland, but there are always a
+few that could not get away, and so we have the famous Scheveningen
+<em>bom</em> on its native strand. How the artists have delighted in
+these lumbering, flat-bottomed tubs, ponderous of mast and weathered
+of sail! Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, and the rest have familiarized
+the world with this fantastic and picturesque craft. Who would buy a
+painting of Scheveningen unless it showed a <em>bom</em> or two hauled up
+on the beach? And that is precisely the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">raison d’ être</i>  of the
+<em>bom</em>—it can be hauled up on the beach. Otherwise,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span> what should a
+Scheveningen fisherman do with a boat, having no deep-water harbor at
+hand nor anchorage facility? There have, through the centuries, been
+many other styles of Dutch fishing-boats,—busses, loggers, hookers,
+sloops, pinken, etc.,—and at times, when the forehanded Hollanders
+have made away with the lion’s share of the foreign catch, outsiders
+have lost patience and classed them all as “Dutch toads”; but there
+have been no <em>boms</em> but Scheveningen <em>boms</em>. Nowadays they
+have had to build them larger and they do not beach so easily, and it
+is probably only a matter of time when steam vessels will supplant them
+altogether; but when that evil hour strikes the chiefest picturesque
+glory of this little village will have forever departed.</p>
+
+<p>There used to be vast excitement, in the old days, over the first
+herring catch of the season, and it was always hurried ashore and
+conveyed to the king’s table with no end of flourish and punctilio.
+Over at Vlaardingen they used to post a watchman on the church tower,
+and when he made out the first boat coming in he would hoist a blue
+flag and all the people trooped joyfully down to the wharves shouting
+a song called “De Nieuwe Haring.” Scheveningen, indeed, still presents
+one of its most picturesque scenes when the returning fishermen arrive
+and their catch is auctioned off, down the beach near the lighthouse,
+with much more of gusto and excitement than you would imagine these
+phlegmatic people could muster. The shrewd Scheveningen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span> fishermen have
+learned how to eke out the bare three hundred florins they realize from
+a year’s fishing by turning new tricks in the way of rope-spinning,
+sail-making, ship-building, and curing and smoking the herring. The
+fish go into this latter process as “steur haring” and emerge as
+“bokking”—if that means anything to anybody!</p>
+
+<p>The long-beaked curlew that flashes overhead with hoarse, raucous news
+of the sea looks down at this hour on pleasant and curious sights as he
+wings his swift circle above the Scheveningen neighborhood. The placid
+village of twisted alleys, of innumerable “Tabak te Koop” signs, of
+queer little gabled houses and unpainted fishermen’s huts, has emptied
+its good folk into its narrow main street which, fickle of name,
+starts out as Keizer-Straat, almost immediately becomes Willem-Straat,
+and within a moment is the Oud-Weg. Here one sees in actual life the
+fascinating things he has marveled over in the canvases of Teniers, Jan
+Steen, and Gerard Dou,—good Dutch <i lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">vrows</i>  supper-marketing. There
+they go, ballooning along, bargaining and bustling from shop to shop,
+storing capacious hampers with game and cheeses, and every grim line
+in their faces shouts a challenge to the shopmen to best them by so
+much as a <i lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">stuiver</i>  if they can. From time to time, quaint little
+children like sturdy Dutch toys escape from the press and clatter
+off home, with an air of vast responsibility, hugging in both arms a
+brown loaf of bread a yard long.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span> How it recalls the bright pages of
+“Hans Brinker”; and as you catch a glimpse of the broad canal down
+the street it is natural enough to speculate upon the probability of
+Gretel’s winning another pair of silver skates before you get back to
+Scheveningen next summer.</p>
+
+<p>In the meadows back of the village women in blue shawls are drying
+and mending fishing-nets, nor do they so much as raise their heads
+as the yellow, double-decked tramway car rumbles past on its trip to
+The Hague. If all seats are occupied the car will display a large
+sign marked “Vol,” and rattle along oblivious to appeals from any and
+all who ask to get on. It is but three scant miles to the beautiful
+capital of Holland and the tramway makes it in ten minutes—a notable
+concession by leisurely Holland to the time-saving spirit of the age,
+in view of other days when they devoted a half-hour to making the same
+journey by canal barge. The broad, smooth highway that the yellow
+car follows is, as every one knows, one of the favorite roads of
+Europe. As the curlew looks down, between five and six o’clock of any
+bright summer afternoon, he is sure to find it thronged with handsome
+equipages and to see gay companies in each little wayside inn that
+peeps out from the deep shade of the noble trees. The desired touch
+of the foreign and unusual is supplied to the visitor in the scores
+of heavy carts drawn by frisking, barking dogs; in the ever-present
+windmills beating the air with long, awkward arms; and in dozens of
+storks that cock their wise<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span> heads over the edges of their nests and
+regard the passing show with philosophic amusement, patient as the old
+apple-women of Amsterdam.</p>
+
+<p>The Scheveningen <em>Bosch</em> is one of the most delightful woods
+imaginable. It is national property, and no private park could be
+more beautifully kept up. A ball would roll with perfect smoothness
+down its driveways of crushed gravel, and even Ireland would be taxed
+to equal the vivid greenness of its lawns. This whole fair forest is
+studded with villas of the aristocracy and even of royalty. Their wide
+verandas and orchards and flowery lawns move the most contented to envy
+a Hollander the comfort he takes in his <i lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">zomerhuis</i>. To know the
+<em>Bosch</em> rightly it must be walked through; and the more leisurely
+and the oftener, the better. It is not only a lovely woodland set with
+charming homes, but everything a fine forest should be. The green and
+coppery beeches, the hardy oaks and elms, and the living embroidery of
+bright flowers perfume the air with delicate odors; and the wind in
+the lofty tops makes sweet and haunting music. Deep down in the clear
+mirror of the canals, splotches of broad leaf shadows lazily float
+and dapple like drowsy fishes. Through the deep foliage you catch
+occasional glimpses of open, sunny meadows, with cows contentedly
+grazing; and you come to revel in every vague and tranquil sensation.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this beautiful forest, two centuries and a half
+ago, the best-beloved and most widely read of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span> Holland’s poets—the
+venerable Jacob Cats—composed his madrigals and moral fables, and so
+passed the last eight years of his eventful career. Rembrandt loved and
+painted him, and a monument stands to his memory in his native town of
+Brouwershaven. They say his books are in every peasants’ hut and his
+verses in every peasant’s heart. His cottage was at Zorgvliet, a few
+steps from Scheveningen, near where the Queen Mother now has her summer
+home, and there in the garden of the Café de la Promenade they will
+show you the old stone table at which he wrote, with the hole he cut in
+it for his inkstand.</p>
+
+<p>Wild game throng the wooded inner dunes. Partridges, hares, and rabbits
+abound in the underbrush, and the polder meadows yield the finest grade
+of mallard ducks. The pines and firs are resonant with the calls of
+cuckoos, pheasants, and nightingales. Farmers clear patches of ground
+to serve as finch flats, which they call <i lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">vinkie baans</i>; and
+there, in the autumn, they snare chaffinches which they sell for a cent
+apiece, to be used as a garnishment in serving other game.</p>
+
+<p>As you look out across the Scheveningen dunes and watch the day
+declining, stirring thoughts come trooping to mind of the gallant
+scenes these bleak shores have witnessed. Off yonder, two centuries
+and a half ago, fell the brave Tromp, hero of thirty-three sea fights.
+On the bridge of his lofty-sterned Brederode he died, as every true
+warrior longs to die, in the foremost thick of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span> the fray. “I am done;
+but keep up a good heart,” were his last words as they carried him into
+his cabin. Next day they brought his body to these shores and bore it
+away to lie in the old gray church at Delft beside the revered William
+the Silent. “The bravest are the tenderest,” and his war-hardened
+sailors were not ashamed to weep as heartily for him as the little
+children, fifty years before, had wept in the streets for the great
+William. Half a dozen years later a shouting multitude thronged this
+beach and waved a <em>bon voyage</em> to Charles <abbr title="the fourth">II</abbr> of England as he
+sailed homeward to his recovered throne, to restore a licentious court
+and renew such royal revels as had already cost England a revolution.
+Another dozen years roll around, and Scheveningen looks on while the
+fleets of France and England are battered to wreckage by the cannon
+of Holland’s pet hero, the intrepid De Ruyter. A century or so more,
+and once again this village is the storm centre of Holland’s hopes and
+fears as William Frederick <abbr title="the first">I</abbr> eludes the pursuing French troops and a
+little Scheveningen fishing-smack bears the whole royal family away
+in safety to Germany. And when he came back in triumph, twenty years
+later, it was at Scheveningen that he landed, and at the very spot
+where yonder gray obelisk now stands in commemoration.</p>
+
+<p>And now through chilly mists the sun, a vast bloated orange, settles
+down into the glowing wastes of the desolate North Sea. The roaring
+surf spreads glittering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span> carpets far up the beach. It has suddenly
+become a region of placid power and glory, something quite other than
+the fabled home of monsters and terrors, of tempest and shipwreck.
+That vessel in the offing, with the black hull and the crimson sails,
+may be the very Flying Dutchman’s own; but still you would like to
+be on it and so much nearer the sinking sun. The sky is astounding;
+like a glorified Holland! There you see cloud-islands more wonderful
+than Walcheren; gray wastes that beggar the Zuyder Zee; sky dunes that
+stretch beyond Helder or the Hook; meadows more gorgeous than the tulip
+fields of Haarlem; celestial flora more pure and palpitating than any
+fairest, faintest bloom in any rarest, dimmest glade throughout the
+whole woodland of The Hague. It is Holland <em>in excelsis</em>.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_181">
+<img src="images/i_181.jpg" alt="" width="292" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="BERLIN">BERLIN</h2>
+
+<p class="center">6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">While</span> the sun is still sinking behind the Potsdam hills that victorious
+old Fighting Fritz loved so well, and the hero himself, astride his
+bronze charger, in cloak and cocked hat in the statue group on the
+Linden, seems riding slowly home to his neighboring palace with the
+lengthening shadows, the vast industrial army of the German capital
+issues in myriad units from its individual barracks and debouches
+on the spacious squares and broad avenues in quest of the evening’s
+diversions. It is the lull hour. The long, hard day’s work over,
+the amusements of the night are shortly to begin. In this pleasant
+interval the bustling, aggressive city seems pervaded with a spirit
+of relaxation, and no more opportune moment presents for catching the
+Berliner off his guard and really seeing him as his intimates know him.</p>
+
+<p>This man, it should be borne in mind, is a type unto himself. The
+light-hearted Rhinelander, the solemn Bavarian, and the plodding,
+self-reliant Saxon are only half-brothers to the energetic, systematic,
+masterful Prussian whose most boisterous and irrepressible development
+is the Berliner. He plays as hard as he works,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span> yielding to none in
+the thoroughness of either. He has a strong individuality, but with
+something of coarseness in feeling. He is enormously self-assertive,
+indefatigable, and patient, but scratch through his veneer of culture
+and you find a basis that is rude and often boorish. His optimism is
+sublime and his spirits correspondingly high. At work he is engrossed
+and determined, but when it is laid aside for the day he enters as
+eagerly upon his pastimes; and it is then one finds him witty and merry
+to a degree, but, at times, with the loudness and ostentation of a
+mischievous, unruly schoolboy. He is the sort of man that has a great
+time in zoölogical gardens, and goes picnicking in his best clothes.
+Intellectually, he is still as Buckle described him in the “History
+of Civilization in Europe,” the foremost man in the world when he is
+a scholar and the most ordinary in the main. Europeans dub him “a
+practical hedonist”; in America we should refer to him as “rough and
+ready.”</p>
+
+<p>As soon as supper is over these joyous and virile people display their
+primitive scorn of roofs and flock into the open for fun and frolic;
+yet supper, itself, has been one of Gargantuan proportions at which
+an observer, recalling Rabelais, might well have trembled for palmers
+in the cabbage. From the four quarters they gather in force to hang
+about the fountains in the roomy squares or loaf on the Linden benches
+until the call of the concert-hall or the comfortable, tree-shaded
+beer-garden allures to those bibulous indulgences that old Tacitus,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>
+eighteen centuries ago, noted as peculiarly their own. For silent now
+are the forges and furnaces of Spandau, the clothing <em>Fabriks</em>
+of the northeast suburbs, the factories of the east end, and all the
+skilled industries of the south. The artist colony of Moabit may no
+longer complain of drilling regiments, and the mammoth business blocks
+they call <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Höfe</i>  have swelled the throng of clerks on Friedrich
+and Leipziger Strassen. All have supped; and merchant and laborer fare
+forth <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en famille</i>  to take the evening air.</p>
+
+<p>With what heartiness and placidity does this multitude enjoy its ease!
+It is a trick your highstrung peoples beyond the borders can never
+get the hang of. It calms one merely to look on at the contentment
+and satisfaction with which they stroll slowly and merrily along,
+chattering animatedly in their deep guttural speech, and greeting
+friends with punctilious bows and infinite hat-raisings. With every
+other word they “bend their backs and they bow their heads,” like the
+celebrated character of “Dorothy.” There is an agreeable absence of
+rush and hurry. Ponderous and massive, but with an erectness bred of
+military training, they wear their sombre, loose-fitting clothes with
+palpable relish, for comfort and inconspicuousness are virtues of price
+with the Teuton. The stately <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">gnädige Frau</i>  treads heavily in
+rustling silk, the mincing <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Fräulein</i> favors ribbons and flounces,
+and <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">mein Sohn</i> is dapper in a tight suit, lavender gloves, and
+the indispensable little cane. Chaperons, of course,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span> abound; for if a
+young man were to walk abroad alone with an unmarried girl in Berlin he
+would be consigning her at once to a plane with the painted <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">nymphe
+de pavé</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The surroundings are animated. Motor-cars roll sedately along with the
+least din possible and with scrupulous regard for speed limits, and a
+prodigious assortment of cheap and comfortable <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Droschke</i>  cabs
+hovers expectantly about with their drivers decked out in long coats
+and patent-leather hats. From time to time an officer in brilliant
+uniform or a diplomat in severe black, with a row of orders across his
+breast, posts past hurriedly to dine out in formal state; and with
+knowledge of the terrifying discomfort of a German social function
+comes confidence that most of them look from their smart broughams with
+profound envy at the jovial, care-free crowds that are so boisterously
+happy along the way.</p>
+
+<p>The visitor, who is struggling with an uncomfortable suspicion that he
+may be missing something in the other two rings of the circus, might do
+well to climb the Kreuzberg and take the whole show in like a map. He
+has probably already learned that although the city lies prostrate on a
+level sandy plain as guiltless of a hill as a billiard table, yet the
+indomitable Berliner has repaired this oversight of nature by himself
+building a fine little mountain at a convenient spot due south. That
+is one of the advantages in rearing your own hills—you can have them
+where you want them.</p>
+
+<p>In the sullen red of the dying day one beholds from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span> the battlements of
+the Kreuzberg’s Gothic tower a monster plain, twenty-five miles in an
+irregular circle, smothered in house-tops, and barred and seamed with
+an intricate entanglement of carefully made streets. He sees parks and
+squares in surprising profusion, and an abundance of foliage in spite
+of the sand; and there is a sluggish river winding a serpentine course,
+a <em>Ringbahn</em> encircling the suburbs, an elevated road that dives
+underground and becomes a subway, and surface lines without number. One
+could fancy a great cross in the centre of the city, whose upright is
+the long Friedrichstrasse and whose broad crosspiece is the splendid
+Unter den Linden. The last rays of the sun gild the roofs and spires
+of each of the “town districts,” which the Prussian Diet has recently
+merged into a Greater Berlin of four million souls—Wilmersdorf,
+whose “millionaire peasants” became rich overnight by selling their
+lands to speculators; Charlottenburg the Pampered, that has increased
+tenfold in thirty years; Rixdorf the Prosperous; and Schöneberg the
+Renowned—which is well worth a sentimental journey to the graves of
+the Brothers Grimm under the cypresses of St. Matthew’s Cemetery, if
+only out of gratitude for the familiar versions of “Cinderella,” “Tom
+Thumb,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and so many others of our childhood’s
+companions. The sunset glory falls where glory is due—on a region at
+our feet of ancient martial fame; the little village that the Knights
+Templar held for centuries, and the broad<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span> Tempelhofer Feld,—Prussian
+drill-ground for two hundred years,—whither all Berliners turn
+holiday-faces when the Kaiser reviews the Guards in spring and autumn,
+and journey cockishly homeward when the show is over, “snapping their
+fingers at the foeman’s taunts.”</p>
+
+<p>In every section that the Kreuzberg looks down upon, and still farther
+away under the fading western skies, pleasant signs of recreation
+abound. The Linden overflows, the lesser streets are swollen streams,
+and every open square is a ruffled lake of leisurely humanity. A
+strong tide of loiterers sets through the most popular of Berlin’s
+breathing-places—the stately Tiergarten—and ripples there about the
+bases of statues and monuments, the marble settles of the Sieges-Allée,
+and the sculptured benches of the <em>Anlagen</em> of the Brandenburg
+Gate. There is the usual deep eddy before the graceful statue of the
+adored Queen Louise, which is half-buried in flowers by a grateful
+people every March 10. The bridle-paths teem with lines of aristocratic
+riders, with possibly the Kaiser himself among them. Indeed, no other
+part of the city may compare with the Tiergarten at this hour, so
+beautiful is it in turf and tree and so delightful in heavy fragrance.
+No wonder that Berliners have so long regarded it as the best last
+glimpse of life—to fight duels in by dawn in other days, and to take
+their own lives in now.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_189">
+<img src="images/i_189.jpg" alt="" width="414" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>All Berlin is now out of doors. The millionaires of the exclusive
+Tiergarten purlieus are cooling themselves in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span> their villa gardens,
+and the middle-class man is beaming at the band at the Zoo, where the
+restaurant-terraces are overflowing into the flowered walks among the
+trees. There is a boisterous coterie of shouting children to every
+prim fountain in the prim squares. Out under the pines and cypresses
+of Grunewald crowds returning from the races are gazing admiringly at
+the pretty white villas that rim the verges of the placid forest lakes;
+and others are turning aside for the spectacular amusements of Luna
+Park. At Steglitz the bicycle races are ending and merrymakers are
+swarming into the Botanic Gardens to marvel over the cacti and palms of
+the long hot-houses. Capital boating is in progress on the Spree, and
+sailing at Wannsee, and steamer trips all through the suburbs. Bands
+are crashing in the noisy penny-shows of the tumultuous Zeltern; they
+are having beer in crowded <em>Weinhandlungen</em>, chocolate at dainty
+<em>Conditoreien</em>, and much besides in the jolly Vienna cafés that
+open out invitingly to the street. In every part of the city rise music
+and laughter and the sound of early revelry in pretty, tree-shaded
+summer gardens. It is an audible expression of the Berliners’ joy of
+living—their cherished <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Lebensfreude</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Could we rise with Zeppelin we should find it the same now at
+Charlottenburg, and over at Potsdam. Charlottenburg the Prosperous is
+having its serene and dignified companies sauntering in quiet evening
+talk along the broad, handsome streets. The gay are at the lively<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>
+<em>Orangerie</em>, the philosophic in the trim, pert little parks, and
+the sentimental among the flaming roses and fragrant trellises of the
+charming Palace Garden. In solemn and conscious superiority the great
+Technical High School and famed Reichanstalt shroud their learned
+cornices in the gloaming of tree-tops, and that chiefest mecca of
+all, the royal mausoleum, embowers its gleaming marble walls in heavy
+shrubbery at the bottom of its avenue of pines. No loiterer, you may be
+sure, but thinks reverently of the recumbent snowy effigies of the dead
+rulers that lie in the hushed gloom of that dim interior.</p>
+
+<p>Potsdam, Germany’s Versailles, steeped in the melancholy beauties of
+the Havelland pine forests, redolent of old Frederick the Great and his
+dream of an earthly Sans Souci, thinks nothing of drawing Berliners
+twenty miles to its twilight peace and calm. Exuberance tempers to the
+dignity and beauty of those parks and palaces where the Kaiser has his
+favorite royal seat. Up the broad Hauptweg they stroll by hundreds
+and gladden their patriotic eyes with the colonnades, porticoes, and
+statues of the vast New Palace that proved to the foes of defiant old
+Fritz that the sturdy warrior was far from bankrupt despite the Seven
+Years’ War. Nor do they forget that it was here the late emperor,
+beloved “Unser Fritz,” learned how</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent20">“unto dying eyes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span></p>
+<p>The classic Town Palace of Potsdam is receiving its compliments,
+as usual, and no less the artistic Lustgarten, opulent in marbles
+and fountains; and many will be wandering even out to the cool and
+spacious park that lies about the charming Babelsberg Château. But old
+Frederick remains the local hero, and there is sure to be a crowd at
+the venerable lime-tree where petitioners used to stand to catch the
+eye of the king, and a kind of procession will be passing reverently
+before the garrison church, where lie his remains in the vault before
+which Napoleon outdid himself in eulogy the while he pilfered the old
+warrior’s sword. And the leaping column of the Great Fountain will
+be the centre of an admiring throng, and scores will be going up and
+down the vista of broad stairs and fruited terraces that lead to the
+long, low palace of Sans Souci. As to the latter, a stranger might be
+pardoned if he were to mistake it for a casino, which it strikingly
+resembles, with its flat-domed entrance, line of caryatids like
+pedestal busts, and the row of stone urns on the balustraded top of the
+façade. At this hour there is no admission, but one may peer through
+the low French windows and, in fancy, people Voltaire’s room with a
+miserly ghost of the crafty old philosopher, see him fraternizing and
+quarreling with the king, imagine a royal <em>soirée</em> in progress
+with Frederick playing skillfully on the flute, recall the brilliant
+talk of the Round Table, and think with pity of the cheerless,
+childless old soldier toiling wearily on those histories that Macaulay<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>
+praised, and winding his big clock, and yearning all the while to lie
+buried among his dogs out on the terrace. To many will come visions
+wrought from the extravagant fiction of Luise Mühlbach. What moral
+observations and theatrical posings fell to poor Frederick’s lot in
+her “Berlin and Sans Souci,” sandwiched in among the woeful loves
+of Amelia and Baron Trenck and of the dancer Barbarina and the High
+Chancellor’s son! But perhaps such literature helps one to understand
+the application to Frederick of the celebrated characterization of a
+very different personage, the “wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.”</p>
+
+<p>In Berlin proper there are two fine squares that best serve the
+well-advised as start-and-finish places for the most interesting
+evening walk to be had in the city—the Lustgarten before the Royal
+Palace and the Königs-Platz at the Tiergarten corner. By this notable
+route one arrives, within the smoking of two cigars, at something like
+an intelligent comprehension of Berlin and Berliners.</p>
+
+<p>The gracious expanse of the Lustgarten is so appealing in the
+melancholy light of sunset that one almost feels, at the very beginning
+of the stroll, like going no farther for fear of faring worse, but
+rather remaining where he is among the trees and fountains and artistic
+shrubbery and watching the children playing <em>Hashekater</em> around
+the colossal Granite Basin, or <em>Ringer-Ringer-Rosa</em> at the marble
+stairs of Frederick William’s lofty statue. Soft<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span> splashes of deep
+colors warm the long rows of blinking windows in the Royal Palace on
+the left, and flush the domes of the cathedral and the columns of the
+Old Museum’s Ionic portico. Hundreds of Berliners are idling along the
+asphalt walks that entice to the Palace Bridge that arches the Spree in
+a double line of marble groups and so opens up the long, tree-shaded
+perspective of the Linden. To see it at this hour one would not guess
+that this fair Lustgarten had once been a neglected palace-close and
+even a dusty drill-ground; no more than one could believe that the
+occasional decrepit church or twisting, narrow street in the district
+in the rear is all that marks antiquity in the whole of the city. For
+the furious <em>tempo</em> of Berlin’s development has swept everything
+before it. Three out of every four buildings, all over town, are
+garishly modern. Indeed, it is all so utterly of the present moment
+that it is hard to believe that even a group of fishermen’s huts could
+have stood here beside the Spree so long as seven hundred years ago.
+Were one to see no more of Germany than its capital he might very
+easily imagine a Chicago or two somewhere in the empire, but certainly
+not a Nuremberg.</p>
+
+<p>Sunset imparts an air of cordiality to the ponderous, baroque,
+seven-hundred-roomed Royal Palace, whose four stories of regular window
+lines suggest an ornate and elaborate factory that had been diverted
+from its original purpose by the addition of the chapel dome on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span> the
+west wing. However, for those who cross its low terrace and enter the
+sculptured portals there awaits a revelation of pomp and majesty, of
+throne-room splendors and saloon magnificence, that rivals the best
+of Versailles and Vienna. Unhappily we cannot here see the windows of
+the royal family’s apartments, for they are on the second floor of the
+opposite wing; whence the Kaiser looks out on the Neptune fountain of
+the Schloss-Platz and the elaborate façade of the royal stables when
+the purple banner that denotes his presence flies from the palace
+standard.</p>
+
+<p>In the gloaming the high portico columns, “Lion Killer,” “Amazon,”
+and shadowy sculptured groups of the vestibule of the classic Old
+Museum gleam through the dark branches of the trees with charming
+grace and effectiveness. Not all the imposing galleries on Museum
+Island, just beyond, can displace this well-beloved old temple of the
+arts in the affectionate regard of Berliners. The commanding Dom, or
+cathedral, dominates the Lustgarten and all the city besides, but in
+the modest and inoffensive manner that is becoming in an architectural
+<em>débutante</em> of only six seasons—though that is quite long enough
+for a building to become <em>passé</em> in Berlin. Its granite walls,
+copper domes, high-vaulted portals, elaborately carved cornices,
+and profusion of statuary stand out in beautiful relief against the
+darkness of the trees beyond.</p>
+
+<p>At this hour the sturdy, besculptured Palace Bridge<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span> is thronged with
+loiterers leaning over the broad balustrades to admire the festoons
+of lichen on the opposite masonry embankment or gaze down into the
+languid blue Spree. These waters have journeyed wearily all the way
+from distant Saxony, and with little enough to delight them along the
+road, excepting, perhaps, the scenes of the romantic and picturesque
+forest—Venice of Spreewald, where the strange Wendish people in
+outlandish garb pole flat market-barges through the labyrinth of canals
+and jabber to each other in a foreign tongue. Even on reaching the
+capital, the career of the Spree continues uneventful and dejected;
+and shortly after clearing the city it gives up in discouragement
+and empties itself into the Havel at Spandau. One finds a pleasant
+evening-life along its masonry banks, however, in spite of the personal
+indifference of the stream itself, and sometimes even of a brisk and
+important nature, thanks to the shipping from the canals. Beside these
+urban embankments one sees, here and there, a narrow sidewalk between
+the wall and the houses that instantly recalls the delightful little
+<em>rivas</em> along the Venice canals. It is interesting to watch the
+swift, pert little steamers that dash up and down the stream and to
+take note of the air of bravado with which they plunge under the low
+bridges. Then, there are the soldiers washing their linen service
+uniforms on floating docks. But best of all are the canal boats. These
+invariably have a fat woman at the tiller and an excited dog dancing
+from end to end,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span> while a sturdy husband propels a snail-like passage
+by means of a long pole which he sets to his shoulder like a crutch and
+inserts the other end into niches in the walls and so plods the entire
+length of the deck, with the boat advancing slowly under his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Entering Unter den Linden from the Schloss-Brücke, the imposing array
+of splendid public buildings on either hand of the expanding vista
+suggests the middle of the street as the only adequate viewpoint—and
+the majority take it, in the evening. The visitor is bound speedily
+to conclude that, unless it be Vienna, no European city can boast a
+more beautiful or impressive double line of structures. They have
+dignity and solidity in appearance, richness and taste in decoration,
+and spaces to stand in of princely proportions. The agreeable effect
+of shade trees has been freely made use of, and on all sides one sees
+that profusion of sculpture and statuary in which Berlin is as rich as
+London, for example, is poor. As if impressed with such surroundings,
+the evening crowds move along slowly and observantly, looking up
+admiringly at the dark gray fronts—the statue-set façade of the
+Arsenal, the stately palaces of Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the
+Opera House, the rococo Royal Library, and the palace of old Emperor
+William <abbr title="the first">I</abbr>, from whose famous corner window the conqueror of Sedan
+used to look out affectionately on the street life of his people.
+With no less of satisfaction must the old emperor have looked over
+the heads of the crowds<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span> at the University across the way—the proper
+toast of all Germany. One notes its open square and wide triple story
+and thinks of the ripe scholarship suggested by the surrounding
+statues of its savants, Helmholtz, Mommsen, Treitschke, and the great
+William and Alexander von Humboldt, whose ashes lie out at Tegel
+under Thorwaldsen’s beautiful “Hope.” Here six hundred teachers and
+ten thousand students work in the inspiring memory of such masters
+as these, and of such others as Fichte and Hegel and Schelling. From
+contemplations over the intellectual achievements of Prussia one turns
+to martial glory in the form of Rauch’s immortal equestrian statue
+of Frederick the Great, about which the crowds are now swarming, and
+observes the hero’s head cocked in characteristic defiance and his hand
+lightly resting on the hilt of his ready sword. Berliners make great
+ado in studying and identifying the numerous eminent men of that period
+whose reliefs are exquisitely executed on the four sides of the lofty
+pedestal.</p>
+
+<p>And now we pass under the limes and chestnuts of the five-streeted
+Linden, keeping to the broad gravel promenade in the centre where the
+children play all day and their parents fill the benches half the
+night. On its outer streets one may see the finest hotels, theatres,
+cafés, and shops of the city. It is amusing to watch the people at this
+hour, in settling their arrangements for the evening, cluster about
+the poster pillars that they call<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span> “Litfassäulen,” and the newspaper
+kiosks, scanning announcements and theatre bills. Familiar to them, but
+suggestive to a stranger, are the iron standards at important street
+intersections supporting placards of the red cross of the hospital
+boards to indicate the locations of emergency surgeons, who are always
+on the spot. You may rest on a Linden bench a moment, if you like,
+but expect thrifty Berlin to tax you for it; and read carefully the
+conspicuous placards, so redolent of this systematic city, to learn
+just where you may sit; for some are “reserved for women,” some for
+“nurses with children,” others for “adults,” and what remain for mere
+“men.”</p>
+
+<p>But the well-advised will break the walk when they reach the corner of
+Friedrichstrasse for a few minutes of refreshments at the celebrated
+Café Bauer, where open house is held for all the world, and where
+you may take your ease under the frescoes of Anton Werner, or, at a
+balcony table, look down on the cosmopolitan congestion of the streets
+and observe ladies having ices across the way at Kranzler’s after the
+fatigue of shopping at Tietz’s or Wertheim’s.</p>
+
+<p>The animated scenes of the Café Bauer are those of busy restaurants
+the world over, with the possible difference that Berliners make more
+of café life than many others, as being an institution essential
+to temperaments that crave social diversion, simple enjoyment and
+friendliness. So we hear much laughter and find the air vital<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span> with
+the vociferous rumbling thunder of this deep-lunged speech, and with
+continual explosions of “So!” and “Ach!” and “Ja wohl!” and “Bitte!”
+and “Entschuldigen!” and “Wunderschön!” and, especially, “Prosit!”
+There is an incessant clamoring for waiters by handclaps and shouts
+of “Kellner!” to which those distracted functionaries respond with
+“Augenblick!”—“in a wink of the eye,”—and dash off in haste, to
+return at leisure. The gold that falls in <em>Trinkgeld</em> passes
+belief; but tipping is like breathing all over Berlin. It is said
+that the head waiters pay handsomely for the positions. You will see
+few people in the Café Bauer uncompanioned, for sociability is a
+national characteristic. The man in the corner reading the “Fliegende
+Blätter” or “Illustrirte Zeitung” or any other of the eleven thousand
+publications of the city will shortly be joined by some friend for whom
+he is waiting and raise his voice in the general “Prosit!” chorus.
+Should you address the waiter in English, you will be answered at once
+in that language; as you would, for that matter, in any Berlin business
+house. The formality on every hand, the bowing and eternal thanking,
+is of the Berliner Berlinesque. It is a trick that is soon picked up,
+and it is no time at all before you can enter a store with the best of
+them, remove your hat and wish the clerk “Mahlzeit,” remain uncovered
+until your purchase is made, again bow and say “Mahlzeit,” replace your
+hat, and go about your business.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span></p>
+
+<p>From a balcony table at the Bauer you may study, as you elect, the
+diners within or the crowds without. If it be the latter, you doubtless
+observe at once the extensive presence of the military element that
+so preëminently dominates the empire. There goes a stiff-backed,
+narrow-waisted, tight-coated officer jangling his sword and fussing
+at his gloves. His chin is tilted at a supercilious angle and his
+mustachios are trained to look fierce, like the Kaiser’s. As he
+approaches a brother officer he begins a salute a quarter-block away
+and keeps it up as far again after passing. He would perish before he
+would unbend in public to give the most unofficial of winks at the
+pretty, barearmed nursemaid who is tripping demurely by, and yet it is
+whispered that in private “Die Wacht am Rhein” is not the only song
+he knows. And lo, the humble man of the ranks,—facetiously dubbed
+“Sandhase,”—who is saluting and “goose-stepping” to some superior or
+other the greater part of the time. You perceive him now to be roaming
+about with evident relish; and a familiar bit of local color is the
+dark blue tunic and gray trousers and the brass-bedecked leather helmet
+with its <em>Pickelhaube</em> top spike. You learn to distinguish the
+corps, in time, by the color of the shoulder knots.</p>
+
+<p>Parenthetically, it will be remembered that these husky fellows are
+paid just nine cents a day, and out of that go two and a half cents for
+dinner. Their only free rations are coffee and the famous black bread.
+They<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span> carry their “cash balance” suspended about the neck in a bag, and
+any time an officer wishes to make sure the “sand-rabbit” has not been
+squandering his money too fast, he opens the bag at morning inspection
+and examines the contents. Pay is small, all the way up; a second
+lieutenant, with heavy and unavoidable social obligations, receives
+twenty dollars a month—like an American sergeant. Higher officers must
+live in town and keep their horses. “Marry money” becomes the first
+requirement of the “silent manual.” But Germany’s exposed borders must
+be lined with bayonets, and she has not forgotten that the French war
+cost her a hundred thousand men in killed and wounded; so she maintains
+an army of a peace-footing strength of six hundred thousand, at a cost
+of $175,000,000 a year. The “Defenders of the Fatherland” become, in
+consequence, the pets of the court and the social arbiters of the
+empire.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the Bauer it is amusing to dip for a few moments into the
+tumult of rip-roaring Friedrichstrasse and sweep along with merchants,
+government clerks, shop girls, artists, soldiers, and all the rest of
+the jovial, motley company. Out in the middle of the street students
+go rushing by, boisterously inviting trouble and waving their hats and
+the husky bludgeons they call canes. Conveyances of all descriptions
+are coming and going—<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Droschken</i>, stages, double-decked
+omnibuses, motor-cars, <em>et al.</em> The corner of Leipzigerstrasse<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>
+is a whirlpool through which traffic moves like so much drifting
+pack-ice. Trolley cars pass gingerly by to come to a stop at the iron
+posts marked “Haltestellen.” One notes that the little “isles of
+safety” in the middle of the street have each its representative of
+the omnipresent police, dressed up like major-generals in military
+long coats and nickel-pointed helmets. They could tell you that
+Leipzigerstrasse is just as crowded all the way to the tumultuous
+Potsdam Gate, where on each sharp corner of the five radiating streets
+ponderous hotels project into the maelstrom like pieces of toast on
+spits. I say the policemen <em>could</em> tell you that, if they wanted
+to, but the probability is they would only wave excited hands and shout
+“Verboten!”</p>
+
+<p>And that makes you realize that about everything you want to do in
+Berlin is forbidden for some reason or other. No yarn of the Mormons
+ever conveyed an idea of such perpetual, unwinking vigilance as is
+second nature to this police force. Soon after arriving you become
+uncomfortably conscious of being secretly and unremittingly watched,
+but while this rankles for a while you eventually become acclimated,
+as it were, and pass into a hardened stage of moral irresponsibility
+where you are scrupulously circumspect and not a little sly. Since the
+police have elected to play the rôle of your conscience you determine
+to go about without one, like Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, in the
+balmy confidence that whatever you are up to must be all right or the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>
+authorities would have notified you that it was “verboten” and had you
+up at headquarters for one of those myriad fines that range from two
+cents up.</p>
+
+<p>Parenthetically, again, it is the people’s fault. They are
+government-mad; intoxicated with bureaucracy. Not for all the gold
+reserve at Spandau would they abate one jot of this supervision. There
+is a law for everything. Some one has said that for every pfennig the
+German pays in taxes he expects and receives a pfennig’s worth of
+government. You see it on every hand. Each bus and car is placarded to
+announce its exact seating capacity, as well as the precise amount of
+standing-room on the platforms; once that space is occupied it would
+not stop for you, though you go on your knees. Have you ever taken
+notice of the little metallic racks at each end of a Berlin street
+car? That is where you leave the cigar you may be smoking when you
+enter; putting it anywhere else is absolutely “verboten.” It is the
+spirit of the time. Berlin is a “touch-the-button” town—a machine-made
+community of deadly rote and rule. System is the thing. Street numbers
+have arrows indicating which way they run; letter boxes are cleared
+every fifteen minutes; a letter goes by the pneumatic <em>Rohrpost</em>
+with the speed of a telegram; packages are sent by the parcel delivery
+more quickly and more cheaply than by express; hotels have electric
+elevators and vacuum cleaning. It is so all over Germany. Who ever sees
+a picture of Düsseldorf, these days, without a Zeppelin<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span> airship in the
+background? How eloquent it is of the thoroughness of this people whose
+boastful “Made in Germany” is expressive of the rankest materialism,
+that their warlike capital should be distinguished for the quality and
+quantity of its artistic feeling, and excel, besides, in usefulness,
+as exemplified in scores of museums that are admittedly the most
+instructive of any in the world.</p>
+
+<p>As the last of daylight disappears, Friedrichstrasse’s shops blaze out
+brilliantly in every guise of electricity, the present pet scientific
+rage. The window dressings are highly attractive, but seldom the
+interiors behind them. Americans are finding home products in the kodak
+and sewing-machine stores, in penny-in-the-slot establishments, and
+at alleged American soda-fountains and bars—all displayed for sale
+in business buildings that are better built than the battlements of
+Jericho. People need not go out of a single block on Friedrichstrasse
+to secure every comfort they require, for in so small a space one finds
+fashionable hotels, <em>hôtels garnis</em>, <em>pensions</em>, or the
+exemplary <em>hospices</em> affected by ladies traveling alone; where
+also you may dine at establishments to suit your purse—at extravagant
+cost, or on the lightest of repasts at a <em>Conditorei</em>, or on a
+heavy seven-course dinner at a popular restaurant for twenty cents,
+with a glass of beer in the bargain. One finds the dance halls largely
+supported by foreigners and tourists, of which latter America sends
+fully<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span> forty thousand annually. It is also speedily apparent that the
+undertow of the feverish stream brings its wreckage to the surface,
+where the rouged cheek and carmined lip betray the presence of fiercer
+kinds of “questing bestes” than ever were recorded in the “Morte
+d’Arthur.”</p>
+
+<p>Out again under the rustling trees of the Linden one strolls on in
+increasing delight. In the growing zest of the evening the prosperous
+crowds toss pfennigs to the begging old “Linden Angels” and patronize
+the flower-venders and newsboys. Of the Linden’s fivefold boulevard,
+the outer streets are rumbling with heavy wagons and cabs, the drive
+with carriages, the bridle-path is lively with belated riders and
+the broad middle promenade is overflowing with pedestrians. Good
+Americans, on passing the United States Embassy headquarters, at
+the corner of Schadowstrasse, raise their hats in a sudden welling
+of patriotic reverence, and very likely with a wistful sympathy for
+the <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">heimweh</i> that must frequently oppress the two thousand
+members of the American colony that tarry in the pleasant environs of
+Victoria Louise Platz. Diplomats are coming and going on aristocratic
+Wilhelmstrasse, which sweeps southward at this point, and where the
+lights are beginning to sparkle before the double line of government
+department buildings, royal palaces, and foreign embassy houses. The
+famous palace of mellow gray stone, in which the Iron Chancellor lived
+and held court like a king in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span> heyday of his power, shrouds itself
+proudly in the deep green of its garden of thick shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>But all this fails to hold the stroller’s attention when he glances
+about and sees he is at the end of the Linden and that a dozen steps
+will carry him to a sudden widening into stately Pariser-Platz, at the
+bottom of which, flanked by fountained lateral lawns and light-flecked
+in the twilight blur, rises one of Berlin’s chiefest features—the
+famed Brandenburg Gate. When the Berlin exile is homesick this is
+the picture he always sees—the imposing five-arched gateway, creamy
+against the misty deep green of the Tiergarten tree-tops, the dignified
+fronts of surrounding embassy houses, flowered grass plots on either
+hand, leaping fountains, the long lines of the trees of the Linden, and
+through the gateway-portals glimpses of colonnades and white statues in
+the cool, dusky <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">allées</i> of the park.</p>
+
+<p>It is an inspiring spot. The classic grace of Greece is present in the
+gate itself,—a copy of the Athenian Propylæa,—and the eventualities
+of warfare are suggested in Schadow’s bronze Quadriga above it, which
+the envious Napoleon carried off to his Paris. These old trees of the
+Linden know much of the turning of the wheel of fortune; they shook
+to the tread of the conquering legions of Napoleon the Great, after
+Jena, when Queen Louise and her little ten-year-old son fled in want
+and humiliation; but they also rocked, threescore and five years later,
+to the shouting of the armies of a united<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span> and triumphant Germany when
+that same little boy, become Emperor William <abbr title="the first">I</abbr>, returned from the
+annihilation of Napoleon the Little.</p>
+
+<p>Any German student, adequately inspired, will tell the legend of the
+Quadriga; how the Goddess of Victory each New Year’s Eve drives her
+chariot and four up the Linden, pays her respects to Frederick the
+Great on his bronze horse and is back in her place by 1 <span class="allsmcap">A.M.</span>
+And that is the night, by the way, that the Great Elector rides his
+charger all over the city, taking note of the year’s changes, and
+returns to his position on the Kurfürsten Brücke before the stroke of
+one. Out of the same Nibelungen Land comes the legend of the White
+Lady that goes moaning through the Royal Palace when a Hohenzollern
+is about to die. Now we are on Berlin traditions, it may be said that
+there is more agreeable flesh and blood to the custom of receiving
+bouquets from the witches of the Blocksberg on Walpurgis Nacht (May
+1), and an altogether human foundation for the ancient torch dances at
+Hohenzollern weddings, of which Carlyle has given so enthusiastic a
+description.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the gate, we face a beautiful picture. The sweeping arc of the
+<em>Anlagen</em>, rimmed with marble benches, balustrades, and statues,
+is spirited with pleasure seekers, and its thick lines of lights are
+all glowing brightly, and carriages and cabs are speeding noiselessly
+across it. An attractive dilemma presents, as to whether we choose to
+reach the adjoining Königs-Platz by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span> embowered and vernal Path
+of Peace—the tree-arched Friedens-Allée through this corner of the
+Tiergarten—or by the celebrated War-Way—the Sieges-Allée—between the
+double lines of the thirty-two marble groups portraying the rulers of
+the House of Brandenburg. There are advantages to either; the first is
+shorter and supremely sylvan, but the second presents an opportunity
+of settling for one’s self the violent difference of opinion as to the
+artistic merits of this elaborate gift of the Kaiser to his capital.
+Each of the groups of the latter has a heroic statue of a Prussian
+ruler half encircled by a marble bench whose ends are Hermes busts
+of eminent men of that period. We are entitled to an opinion. Some
+pronounce it incomparable; others think it pompous and insipid, and
+very much like a stone cutter’s yard.</p>
+
+<p>In either event one soon reaches the Königs-Platz, and beholds
+envisioned the power and glory of the Fatherland. At no hour does it
+appear to such advantage as at twilight. The dusky shadows lie heavy
+about the great circular field of trees and shrubbery, shrouding the
+sculptured mass of the vast Reichstag building until its huge glass
+dome looms like a colossal moon in a lake of emerald. Bismarck and Von
+Moltke rise above their statue-groups like demigods of bronze, and
+the lofty Column of Victory, studded with captured cannon, rears its
+brisk and lightly-poised angel to acclaim the glories of Germany to
+an invisible world among the skies. Kroll’s neighboring summer garden
+is gay in hundreds of colored<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span> lights that glow in the grass plots
+and dim arbors and hang like pendent fruit from the branches of the
+trees. The dusk deepens into gloom, and twilight plays Whistler-tricks
+with fountain spray and statue. Distant domes pass, in night wizardry,
+for ghostly war-tents of Von Moltke. Faint vapors steal among the
+trees of the lower levels, and the dark of dim retreats is deeper
+for the brilliance of groups of lights that fade surrounding foliage
+into shades of pale olive. Music drifts softly over from Kroll’s,
+and the subdued hum of engulfing Berlin conveys a pleasant sense of
+companionship and a feeling of admiration and affection.</p>
+
+<p>In the vivid appreciation of all we have just been seeing, one thinks
+in amazement, <em>What a people!</em> Harveyized against everything but
+progress, they are bending their tremendous energy to the enormous
+task of transforming Berlin from the capital of a kingdom into the
+capital of an empire. To see what they are accomplishing is to whip
+one’s wastrel forces and holystone his resolution. Here is energy and
+power of a kind to move mountains. Foreign critics bite their nails in
+envy and decry Berlin as “a parvenu among capitals”; they say it lacks
+distinction, is solemnly conscious of its new dignity, is “big without
+being cosmopolitan, and imposing without being impressive.” That it
+is garishly modern is true enough, as in the light of its sudden
+apotheosis it could not have otherwise been, and its own people are
+first to admit frequent grave errors in artistic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span> taste. But taken all
+in all, a fairer, more substantial or more worthy city has never before
+been reared in the same length of time in the history of mankind. Nor
+is the end yet. The soaring impetus of the capital waxes with its own
+effort; gathers strength with each fresh achievement. Germany may be
+pardoned for taking pride in having risen as a world power to the very
+van of the nations, with her war-lord one of the foremost figures of
+the era. That his capital is his special pride is well known, and there
+are many who feel that he has gone far to realizing his expressed
+determination to make Berlin the most beautiful city of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>One rests in the Königs-Platz, at the foot of Bismarck’s statue, and
+regards with wonder the stern features of that man of “blood and iron,”
+to whose prescience and indomitable resolution these vast results
+are so largely due. The best of Bismarck is not dead, but lives and
+increases in the activities of his countrymen. As was said of another,
+“Would you see his monument, look about you.” The destiny Germany is
+working out is the one he bequeathed her; all this fair fruition is
+the flower of his seeding. The Kaiser may continue his idolatry of his
+grandfather by sowing the empire with statues of the war emperor, but
+the people do not for a moment forget that the man who previsioned and
+compelled these results was he at the feet of whose grim statue we
+uncover in deep respect in the evening calm of the Königs-Platz. The
+hand was the hand of Bismarck.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_213">
+<img src="images/i_213.jpg" alt="" width="259" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LONDON">LONDON</h2>
+
+<p class="center">7 P.M. TO 8 P.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> will probably have seemed to many that in London the evening hour
+between seven and eight o’clock is the most distinctive and significant
+of the twenty-four, the one that is most expressive of the city’s real
+life and character. It has something in its mellowness and repose
+that stimulates in the spectator a subtle receptiveness and quickens
+a special sensitiveness to the trooping impressions of this manifold,
+multi-faceted community. One comes nearest then to truly “sensing”
+colossal, world-weary, indomitable London, as she relaxes a gracious
+hour to catch breath in the turmoil and struggle that has endured for
+more than a dozen centuries. For quite the same reason as you would not
+say that the ocean is most characteristic in either calm or storm, but
+rather when rolling in long and steady swells, so London is not so much
+her real self at her most vacant hour of sunrise when the milk carts
+clatter where the omnibuses usually are and the street lights turn as
+wan and sickly as the tramps on the benches, nor yet at the height of
+her turbulence when busy men are dashing hatless about Cheapside and
+loaded drays are delayed for hours<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span> in traffic blocks, but rather in
+the agreeable period of early evening “let-up” while truce is effective
+between the working-hours of day and the playing-hours of night.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, “let-up” is meant in a comparative sense only, for in
+the bright lexicon of London there is properly no such word; but
+there comes at seven o’clock at least as much of a lull as is ever
+to be looked for here. The savage roar of the streets is dulled to a
+deep growl, the crowds become shuffling and idle and their relative
+depletion and the proportionate activity and congestion in restaurants,
+<em>pensions</em>, and hotel dining-rooms are eloquent of the fact that
+the great city is now engaged in solemn rites before the Roast Beef
+of Old England. Nor does the altered complexion of things come amiss
+to the distracted foreign visitors who, though at odds in everything
+else, are of one opinion in this, that, without reservation on the
+part of humor, during the greater part of the day they cannot see
+London for the people. By that they mean that the life of the streets
+is so intense and so varied that it proves a serious distraction
+from taking adequate note of the appearance and significance of the
+city itself. It is, therefore, with profound satisfaction that they
+welcome an hour in which they may devote a portion of their energy to
+something more edifying than jostling pedestrians or escaping sudden
+and sordid destruction by motor-car, hansom, or bus. It is now that
+the town throws off the yoke of its drivers and the very<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span> buildings
+become instinct with individuality and character. Every little dim and
+noiseless square, each broad and lordly park, the massive mansions of
+the great whose names have been in history for ages, business blocks
+of Old-World charm to which trade seems the merest incident, blackened
+pavements and Wren’s slender steeples, every memory-haunted nook and
+corner, all wrought by smoke and fog to a blood-brotherhood of neutral
+tones, are joining the song Father Thames is singing of dignity, power,
+and grandeur,—all breathe the common exultation of being London. It is
+more than Self-Assertion. It is Apotheosis!</p>
+
+<p>If this may seem an extravagant idea to some, it is certain there can
+be but one mind as to the relief that comes with the “let-up.” It
+gives a man a chance to find himself after being lost and daunted and
+disheartened all day, and to square off and give the giant a good look
+between the eyes and happily attain to some just impression. “Some just
+impression” is doubtless within the possibilities, but any complete
+one is not. London is so vast in territory, interests, activities, and
+history—such a “monstrous tuberosity of civilized life,” as Carlyle
+observed—that it effectually defies comprehension. It cannot be taken
+in. Look south on it from Hornsey or Primrose Hill, or west on it from
+Blackwell or the Greenwich Observatory, or east from the top of the
+opera house at Hammersmith, or north from Crystal Palace, and you may
+see a vast prairie of house-tops and sharp,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span> aspiring steeples and
+irregular, twisting streets, but you also observe quite the same kind
+of prairies rolling away under the horizon beyond your ken. If one were
+to try such an experiment right at the heart of things, futility would
+still be obvious, for either the Victoria Tower of Parliament or the
+slightly higher dome of St. Paul’s lifts you only four hundred feet
+above the pavement to hang like a lookout in midocean. There might be
+hope of a completer impression if you tried an aëroplane; in which case
+prostrate London-town would take the seeming of some fabulous “questing
+beste” of the “Morte d’Arthur,” in format the traditional lion, rotund,
+monstrous, and oddly marked, half-reclining and gazing fixedly seaward
+down the Thames. A monster, indeed, fourteen miles by ten, and of a
+vitality so expansive that his nebulous aura pervades an area of seven
+hundred square miles! Along his grim, grimy side the Thames draws a
+crawling blue band with a deep <em>U</em> for the convenience of his paws
+as it swings around the Isle of Dogs, the Regent’s Canal marks him
+lightly up the shoulder and clear across the upper body, and along the
+profile of the head meanders the marshy River Lea. Odd green patches
+would stand for the parks—Regent’s on his back, Hyde, Green, and St.
+James’s on his flank, and on his right ear, Victoria. At the present
+hour he is speckled with a myriad of lights from the tip of his tail to
+his chin-whisker, and doubtless in all respects looks wild enough to
+daunt Sir Launcelot himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span></p>
+
+<p>To the average visitor London is the Strand, Fleet Street, Regent
+Street, the Embankment, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, the
+British Museum, and the Tower. But tastes differ in this as in other
+things, and Boswell was doubtless justified in amusing himself by
+noting how different London was to different people. Opinions on the
+subject have always been very decided but hopelessly conflicting.
+“Sir,” quoth Dr. Johnson to Boswell at the Mitre Tavern, “the happiness
+of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.”
+Note Heinrich Heine, on the other hand, observing in his “English
+Fragments”: “Do not send a philosopher to London, and, for Heaven’s
+sake, do not send a poet. The grim seriousness of all things; the
+colossal monotony; the engine-like activity; the moroseness even of
+pleasure; and the whole of this exaggerated London will break his
+heart.” There is wisdom, as always, in a happy mean; and one might do
+worse than to go about his sight-seeing with the whetted curiosity and
+flaming imagination of those country children once described by Leigh
+Hunt as fancying they see “the Duke of Wellington standing with his
+sword drawn in Apsley House, and the Queen, sitting with her crown on,
+eating barley-sugar in Buckingham Palace.”</p>
+
+<p>To such a mood as this, evening impressions are fresh and vivid, and
+the goggle-eyed stranger, suddenly set down at seven o’clock before the
+Shaftesbury Fountain in the centre of Piccadilly Circus,—“feeling in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>
+heart and soul the shock of the huge town’s first presence,”—would
+probably have his own opinion of any intimation that there was really
+very little doing at that time in view of the hour and the absence
+of Londoners in the country. He would rather incline to the view of
+the Chinese prince who took one look at the wave of humanity sweeping
+across London Bridge and went back to his hotel and wrote home that
+he had reached the spot where all human life originates. Certainly
+the stranger at Piccadilly Circus would need but one wild glance at
+the glare and blaze of lights, the excitement around the “Cri,” the
+beckoning bill-boards of the Pavilion, the dazzle of shop windows in
+the sweeping curve of the Regent Street quadrant and the tremendous
+interweaving of carriages, swift hansoms, delivery bicycles, lumbering
+busses, “taxis,” “flys,” and “growlers,” to start him shouting to the
+nearest “Bobby” through the roar of the wild surge for safe passage to
+the sidewalk—which would be readily and obligingly accomplished by
+that calmest and most tranquil of officials, the mere lift of whose
+hand is as miraculously effective as the presence of a regiment at
+“charge.”</p>
+
+<p>And yet the intimation to the stranger would be entirely within
+the facts, for a good proportion of Londoners are too far away to
+hear the seven o’clock bells ring in town. The Briton’s passion
+for out of doors leads him far afield. Thousands are at this hour
+in the surf at Brighton or strolling on the terraced streets of
+the chalk<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span> cliffs there; hundreds are at Harrow enjoying the wide
+prospect beloved by the boy Byron; others in the pleasant villages of
+Hatfield and St. Albans; some are spying for deer in Epping Forest;
+and a happy multitude is turning from the “Maze” and Dutch Gardens
+of Hampton Court to roll homeward by brake and motor-car along the
+incomparable chestnut avenue of Bushy Park, among the placid deer of
+Richmond, and the manifold delights of Kew Gardens. For hours the
+“tubes,” surface cars, and busses have been working to capacity to
+get business men home, and loaded trains have been groaning out of
+Charing Cross, Euston, Paddington, St. Pancras, Victoria, and Waterloo.
+They have all arrived by now at their various destinations—around
+the picturesque Common of Clapham, the breezy heights of Highgate,
+the river greens of Hammersmith, the lush meadows of Dulwich, the
+stuccoed villas of Islington, the quietude of Bethnal Green, or the
+wooded gardens of Brixton Road. Fancy residential property, in every
+guise of architectural surprises, is drowsing in the shade of elm
+and oak and poplar and humming to the contented chatter of reunited
+families. The fortunate stranger whom Sir Launcelot has “asked down”
+to “Joyous Garde” is reveling in the generous roast that makes its
+august appearance between courses of Scotch salmon and Surrey fowl,
+and presently there will be politics and Havanas after the ladies have
+left, and later on a general assembling in a serene walled garden
+with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span> light laughter and low-voiced talk and mild discussion of
+water-parties, dinners, and dances.</p>
+
+<p>The London parks are in full revelry now, with bands at play and
+tens of thousands of loiterers crowding the benches and moving along
+broad, graveled walks under the deep shadows of old elms and in the
+fragrance of trim flowerbeds. At Hampstead Heath, for example, not so
+much as the ghost of a highwayman haunts the bracken-carpeted hills,
+and East-Enders are out there in force along “Judge’s Walk,” and in
+the “Vale of Health” that Keats and Leigh Hunt admired, or up at the
+“Flagstaff” inspecting “Jack Straw’s Castle,” as Dickens so often did,
+or speculating upon the sources of the ponds with as much aplomb as
+ever did Mr. Pickwick himself.</p>
+
+<p>Down on rugged and untamed Blackheath the band is playing at “The
+Point,” and in all that region where Wat Tyler and Jack Cade stirred
+Kent to rebellion the talk is now of London docks and the latest scores
+of the golfers.</p>
+
+<p>Up at airy Victoria Park the swans in the ponds and the chaffinches in
+the hawthorn bushes are performing to enthusiastic audiences, and the
+Gothic Temple of the Victoria Fountain is rimmed with rough gallants
+and the “Sallies of their Alleys” who betray no inclination to “attempt
+from Love’s sickness to fly.”</p>
+
+<p>The cyclists are foregathered at picturesque Battersea Park and
+chatting with their sweethearts over tea in the refreshment rooms,
+while hundreds of unemployed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span> who can afford neither bicycle,
+sweetheart, nor tea gaze gloomily on the gorgeous blooms of the
+sub-tropical garden, loll over the balustrade of the long Thames
+embankment, and end up by sprawling face down on the grass or dozing
+fitfully on the benches.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the largest outpouring of all is at ever popular Regent’s Park,
+preferred by the substantial middle-class,—long noted, like George
+<abbr title="the first">I</abbr>, for virtues rather than accomplishments. Doubtless they are now
+rambling through the Zoo, exploring the Botanic Gardens where flowered
+borders and large stone urns are spilling over with brilliant color,
+watching the driving in the “Outer Circle,” or swelling the throng on
+the long Board Walk. Hundreds on these shady acres are taking their
+ease with all the unction of Arden:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Under the greenwood tree</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Who loves to lie with me,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And tune his merry note,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Unto the sweet bird’s throat.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In all probability tremendous admiration is being expressed at
+aristocratic Hyde Park, as usual, for the broad reaches of velvety
+turf and the venerable oaks and elms. More than one will indulge a
+pleasant reverie over the dead and gone who have braved it there—Pepys
+in his new yellow coach, dainty ladies in powder and patches flashing
+sparkling eyes on the gallants, and the scented, unhappy beaux who have
+sighed with Shenstone along these <em>allées</em>:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“When forced from dear Hebe to go</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">What anguish I felt at my heart.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Across the Serpentine in the children’s paradise of Kensington Gardens
+we should find that the Board Walk and the “Round Pond” lose none of
+their drawing-power with the years and that the fountains and flowers
+are as beautiful and as highly prized as ever. There is the additional
+attraction of having a chance, by keeping a sharp eye on the tops of
+the tall ash-trees, of catching a glimpse of Peter Pan preparing to fly
+home to his mother’s window.</p>
+
+<p>The exclusive shades of Green Park and St. James’s have a convenient
+nearness that entices hundreds from the roaring thoroughfares of the
+neighborhood, and at this hour their old elms and graceful bowers
+give impartially of their repose and peace to hearts that are heavy
+and hearts that are gay. It would seem inevitable that thoughts must
+come of the royal and princely companies that once trod these ways—of
+Charles <abbr title="the second">II</abbr>, at least, strolling in St. James’s surrounded by his dogs,
+pausing a while to feed his ducks and then tripping gayly up the
+“Green Walk” for a chat with Nell Gwynn over the garden wall, while
+scandalized John Evelyn hurries home to make note in his journal of “a
+very familiar discourse between the King and Mrs. Nelly.”</p>
+
+<p>The London social season being at its height during May, June, and
+July, while Parliament is in session, belated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span> clerks wending homeward
+between seven and eight o’clock find the great houses occupied and
+dinner-parties in progress with as much universality as a New York
+clerk, under like circumstances at home, would expect to see in
+December. All Mayfair, Belgravia, and Pimlico is indulging in feasting
+and merriment, and the austere aloofness of their retired squares,
+with central parks high-fenced in iron from contact with the “ordinary
+person,” is broken by the whirl of the carriages and motors of arriving
+guests. The sudden flood of soft lights from the reception hall as
+Hawkins throws open the door, and the quick and noiseless disappearance
+of the conveyances, is all of a moment and our clerk finds himself
+disconsolately gazing at the frowning front of some solid, ivy-grown,
+and altogether charming old mansion, through whose carefully-drawn
+window draperies only the slightest of beams dares venture forth to
+him. Were he to indulge such a passion for walking as characterized
+Lord Macaulay,—said to have passed through every street of London in
+his day,—he would find the same thing in progress at this hour in all
+the exclusive region that lies in the purlieus of Buckingham Palace.
+Dignity, riches, elegance, and power would be his in hasty, grudging
+glimpses—and then the dim square again and the high iron fence. The
+London square, indeed, seems decorative only—trees, turf, flowers, and
+the fence, and the surrounding houses playing dog-in-the-manager. This
+is not always without its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span> bewilderment to foreigners; and so confirmed
+a traveler as Théophile Gautier puzzled over the matter considerably
+before he dismissed it with the conclusion that it is probably
+satisfaction enough to the owners to have kept other people out.</p>
+
+<p>If our clerk were to take the “tube” at Brompton Road and come out at
+Whitechapel Station in the East End, he would see the other side of the
+story with a vengeance. To quote Gautier again, “to be poor in London
+is one of the tortures forgotten by Dante.” Here the air is stifling
+with dirty dust, and thousands of miserable, unkempt creatures with
+wan and pasty faces feed, when they can muster a penny, on a choice
+of “black puddings,” pork-pies, “sheep-trotters,” or the mysterious,
+smoking “faggots.” In old Ratcliffe Highway, which is now St. George
+Street, they make out by munching kippers carried in hand as they go
+their devious ways. An occasional stale fish from Billingsgate is that
+much better than nothing. Yiddish seems to be the prevailing national
+tongue east of Aldgate Pump, and if you understand it there will be
+no trouble over the signs and announcements. With characteristic
+Hebrew thrift it is always “open season” for buyers. Each product
+has its special habitat. Toys or other sweatshop articles come from
+Houndsditch, shoes from Spitalfields, leather goods from Bermondsey,
+beef remnants from Smithfield, left-over poultry from Leadenhall,
+vegetable “seconds” from Covent Garden, birds<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span> are to be had in Club
+Row, meat and clothing in Brick Lane, and a general outfitting in
+Petticoat Lane which the reformers have rechristened Middlesex Street.
+As for a “screw o’ baccy” or a “mug o’ bitter,” the “pub” of any corner
+will answer. The University Settlement workers of Toynbee Hall are
+doing what men can to better conditions, but so have others tried for
+ages—yet here is the malodorous East End practically as unwashed and
+unregenerate as of old. The glimpses one catches of squalor and filth
+up narrow passages and of the damp and grimy “closes” that remind you
+of Hogarth’s drawings are apt to content the most curious, unless he be
+an insatiable investigator, indeed, and is willing to take his chances
+of being “burked.” Hand on pocket you thread narrow alleys where people
+are said to have been offered attractive bargains on their own watches
+when they reached the other end. Here after the day’s work is over and
+the “moke” and barrow safely stabled for the night, with a “Wot cher,
+chummy; ’ow yer ’oppin’ up?” our industrious coster friends, ’Arry
+and ’Arriet, make merry among pals at a “Free and Easy,” or lay out a
+couple of “thri’-p’ny bits” for seats in a local theatre, whence they
+emerge between acts for a “’arf-en’-’arf” or a “pot-o’-porter” with
+instant and painfully frank opinions if “it ’yn’t fustryte.” Dinner at
+“The Three Nuns,” of course, is only for state occasions. They are the
+people, just the same, to get most out of Hampstead Heath on a Bank
+Holiday or a picnic at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span> Epping Forest any time. With them originated
+in days gone most of the catchy street-cries for which London was long
+curiously noted. But one hears no more “Bellows to Mend!” or “Three
+Rows a Penny Pins!” or “Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive oh!” or
+“Sweet Blooming Lavender, Six Bunches a Penny!” or “One a Penny, two
+a Penny, Hot Cross Buns!” or the traditional tune of “Buy a Broom!”
+or the barrow-woman’s “Ripe Cherries!” and “Green Rushes O!” You may,
+however, have a chance at “’Taters, all ’ot!” or “Three a Penny,
+Yarmouth Bloaters; ’ere’s yer Bloaters!” After all, it takes a very
+limited inspection of the East End to wish them all in Hyde Park, as
+the flag falls at seven-thirty, to join the hundreds of men and boys
+there who are out of their clothes before the signal is barely given
+and taking an evening plunge in the Serpentine.</p>
+
+<p>Between the truffles of Mayfair and the “faggots” of Whitechapel lies
+the region of the menu with which the average Londoner is most familiar
+and which he is now exploring with profound earnestness according to
+his lights and shillings. Dining, as every one knows, is an important
+expression of the British conscience, a solemn rite of well-nigh
+religious momentousness. The traditional fate of the uninvited guest is
+his in double measure who ventures to intrude between the Briton and
+his beef. One might “try it on,” perhaps, on the Surrey Side where they
+incline to “dining from the joint” around six o’clock—though nothing
+short of compulsion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span> should take a sight-seer to South London after
+nightfall. The shabby Southwark shore of dingy wharves and grimy sheds
+is half concealed in drifting shadows raised by the uncertain light of
+flickering gas jets and the net results are not worth the trouble of
+walking London Bridge, unless we except the picture of quiet dignity
+and mellow beauty presented by the ancient church of St. Saviour. This
+rare old survivor finely expresses by night the subtle sense of a
+long-continued veneration and the finger-touches of the passing years.
+And to think that St. Saviour’s was doing parish duty and was a delight
+to look upon long before the Globe Theatre of Shakespearean fame had
+reared a neighboring head! But the gloom of the Surrey Side is thicker
+and more discomforting than the fog. Long, monotonous, cheerless
+streets, poorly lighted and scantily employed after dark, emerge from
+drab perspectives of gloaming and fade sullenly away into others. The
+scattered pedestrians one encounters reflect by solemn countenance the
+prevailing depression and seem able to take but little heart of courage
+as they go their melancholy ways. The whole region appears given over
+to breweries, potteries, factories, and hospitals. By night Lambeth
+Palace itself takes on the universal brewery aspect. You even detect
+a vatish look to the Greenwich Observatory and mistrust some trace of
+beer in the famous meridian. And then the tarry hotels of Greenwich
+must add their quota to the general<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span> dejection by offering everything
+in the world in the way of fish excepting its celebrated whitebait,
+which was, of course, the one thing you had come for. The lights of St.
+George’s Circus—the Leicester Square of South London—may be few in
+point of fact, but they seem highly exhilarating down there; nor are
+you to scorn the good cheer of the comfortable old tavern hard by that
+rejoices in the extraordinary name of “The Elephant and Castle.” There
+may also be a kindly feeling for the Old Kent Road where Chevalier’s
+coster “knock’d ’em,” but otherwise the breweries win. There is one
+on the sacred site of the old Globe Theatre, something like one where
+stood the Tabard Inn whence Chaucer started his immortal Pilgrims for
+Canterbury, and you will find a brazen gin palace if you search for
+“The White Hart Inn,” of “Henry <abbr title="the sixth">VI</abbr>” and “Pickwick Papers.” Poor old
+Southwark! Her glorious days of light have passed!</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“And ‘she’ shakes ‘her’ feeble head,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">That it seems as if ‘she’ said,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘They are gone.’”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Even Southwark is not much duller at this hour than that ancient
+nucleus that is still styled the “City.” Where the leading commercial
+centres and money markets of the world were in frenzied activity,
+two or three hours ago, a few belated pedestrians now go clattering
+along echoing and deserted streets with an unhappy air of apology.
+No section of London undergoes so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span> amazing a transformation each
+day; nor is any other so drear and cheerless by the suddenness of
+contrast—attesting the keenness of Lowell’s observation that nothing
+makes so much for loneliness as the sense of man’s departure. There is
+little dining now in the region where Falstaff once reveled at “The
+Boar’s Head” and the Shakespearean coterie at “The Mermaid Tavern.”
+The low, windowless, stolid Bank of England gropes like a blindman
+toward Wellington on his horse before the lofty Corinthian portico
+of the Royal Exchange, and the massive, sombre Mansion House of the
+Lord Mayor suggests some ruined temple of Paestum. “Gog” and “Magog”
+slumber in the dusty recesses of the old Guildhall, and the pigeons
+nest in its blackened eaves unstartled by the impassioned oratory of
+government ministers at banquets. But it is the time of times to attend
+the sweet chiming of Bow Bells, under the dragon in the beautiful tower
+that Wren built for St. Mary’s, and one could almost wish to have
+been born cockney if only to have heard them ringing from babyhood.
+The winding and gloomy little streets whose names recall so much in
+the lives of the Elizabethan literati entice one craftily, like so
+many Bow runners, into the purlieus of the Tower, within the shadows
+of whose momentous walls cabmen drowse securely on the boxes of dusty
+four-wheelers. To the imaginative stranger its bright fascination by
+day suffers a night-change into something gruesomely repellent,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span> and
+the “beef-eaters” do not protect the crown jewels half so effectively
+as do the headless shades of Lady Jane Grey and Henry’s unhappy
+queens, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Doubtless there are safer
+thoroughfares on earth than Lower Thames Street in the early evening,
+but they would not lead to as diverting a neighborhood. The wharves
+and storehouses may not be as tumultuous as by day, but the fastidious
+wayfarer encounters at Billingsgate enough strength of language and
+odor to satisfy. Tom Bowling is entertaining Black-eyed Susan at some
+East End “hall,” but the “pubs” are roaring with “the mariners of
+England that guard our native seas.” Still, cutty-pipes are glowing
+at Wapping Old Stairs, and the heaving turmoil of the shipping in the
+“Pool,” with swaying riding-lights dotting the vast tangle of masts and
+cordage, prepares you for the shock of the amazing human wave that is
+ever surging with a ceaseless roar across old London Bridge. Caught in
+the strong current of that billow one washes back to Wellington and his
+horse and drifts aimlessly along under the raised awnings of the tailor
+shops of Cheapside, with scarce time for a grateful hand-wave to hushed
+and shadowed St. Augustine’s for the “Ingoldsby Legends” its former
+rector gave us, before he finds himself high and dry in Paternoster
+Row and the bookish churchyard of St. Paul’s. The great cathedral is
+imposing, without doubt, and no one would think of saying that Wren
+did not earn the two hundred<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span> pounds per annum he received during the
+thirty-five years it took him to build it;—and yet it can hardly be
+expected to appear over-cheerful by night, when it is chill and gloomy
+and repellent by day with the sun powerless to warm the tessellated
+floor and stiff, gloomy monuments with the brightest colors of its
+stained-glass windows—futile to rival even the moon in that vision of
+Keats as she</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And on her silver cross soft amethyst,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And on her hair a glory, like a saint.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The moon, however, will aid us now in quickening into life the rich
+memories that adhere to the surrounding churchyard and to Paternoster
+Row, where so many generations of authors and publishers in dingy shops
+and inns and coffee-houses have debated the launching of immortal
+books. Every English-published volume must still start its race from
+neighboring Stationers’ Hall.</p>
+
+<p>The foolish stranger who chooses such an hour for a tramp about the
+“City” will breathe more freely, after he has exorcised the last
+whimpering shade of Newgate and “the poor prisoners of the ‘Fleet,’”
+as he hurries along Ludgate Hill and attains unto his heart’s desire
+at Fleet Street. Thence on, it is all the primrose way. No matter what
+the hour or season, he can never be companionless in the “Highway of
+Letters”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span> for its very excess of material and immaterial presences.
+In its brief and narrow course of a few hundred yards, the richest
+in literary associations of any region on earth, the weather-beaten,
+irregular fronts of its old stone houses look down affectionately, and
+perhaps pityingly, on hurrying journalists and anxious authors, as
+they have been doing for ages. The leisurely diner of the old school
+who clings to the mellow places of inspiring associations is pretty
+sure to be going along Fleet Street at this time, intent on a chop and
+kidneys and a mug of stout at “The Cock,” preferred of Tennyson, or a
+beefsteak-pudding and toby of ale at the sand-floored “Cheshire Cheese”
+palpitant with memories of autocratic and snuffy Dr. Johnson exploding
+with “Sirs,” of good-natured Goldsmith, crotchety Reynolds, impassioned
+Burke, merry Garrick, and all the others of that deathless company. The
+usual evening idler and aimless stroller always makes Fleet Street a
+part of his pleasant itinerary, and it matters little to him that the
+sidewalks are narrow and the crowd uncomfortably large, when he can
+beguile each yard or two by lingering glances up dim and fascinating
+little rookery courts full of mysterious corners and deep shadows whose
+paving-stones have reëchoed the tread of so many sons of fame. The
+lights may not be as bright nor as numerous as in the Strand, nor the
+shops as attractive, but they are non-existent to the sentimentalist
+who is seeing Izaak Walton in his hosier<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span> shop at the Coventry Lane
+corner and Richard Lovelace in dingy quarters up Gunpowder Alley, and
+is peering wistfully through the arched gateway to the Temple for a
+glimpse of Lamb’s birthplace or Fielding’s home or Goldsmith’s grave or
+a sight of those delightful “old benchers,” brusque “Thomas Coventry,”
+methodical “Peter Pierson,” and gentle “Samuel Salt.” Doubtless he is
+able even to detect the rich aroma of the chimney-sweeps’ sassafras tea
+in the neighborhood of “Mr. Read’s shop, on the south side of Fleet
+Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street.”</p>
+
+<p>The shadows fall away with startling suddenness as Fleet Street becomes
+the Strand at Temple Bar. The jolliest uproar of all London storms
+impetuously along that modern Rialto all the way into Trafalgar Square.
+Brilliant lights, shop displays of every description, theatres, hotels,
+and restaurants create a profusion of excitement for the gay and
+jostling crowd that harries you perilously near to the curb and the
+heavy wheels of the ponderous busses.</p>
+
+<p>And what an amazing institution the London bus is! The Strand might
+still be the Strand if St. Mary’s and St. Clement Danes were effaced
+from its roadway, but what if the busses went! Gladstone’s partiality
+for these archaic contrivances was extreme, which naturally disposed
+Disraeli to take the other side and champion the fleeting hansom—“the
+gondola of London,” as he aptly styled it. And, indeed, much may be
+said<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span> in commendation of the omnipresence, economy, and convenience
+of the latter, and of its friendly way of flying to one’s aid at the
+merest raising of the hand to whisk you away at breakneck speed and
+through a thousand hairbreadth escapes to any possible destination
+you may indicate. But the majority vote with Gladstone, nevertheless,
+and take their ease on a bus-top. It is true that in the profusion
+of advertising signs you may not always be certain whether you
+are bound for Pear’s Soap or Sanderson’s Mountain Dew, but with
+blissful indifference you pocket the long ticket, and, ensconced
+among the glowing pipe-bowls in the dusk of a “garden-seat,” “rumble
+earthquakingly aloft.” What a delight it is to hear the cockney
+conductor drawl “Chairin’ Crauss,” “Tot’nh’m Court Rauwd,” “S’n
+Jimes-iz Pawk,” and the rest of it! From your heaving perch beside
+the ruddy-faced driver in his white high hat you observe that your
+ark keeps turning to the left,—the English rule of the road,—and
+that now you must look down instead of up to find the placards on the
+trolley posts that mark the stopping-places of the trams. You see
+belated solicitors and barristers hurrying out of the great gray courts
+of justice, and above the heads of the pedestrians you may study the
+gloomy arches of Somerset House or the ornate Lyceum where Sir Henry
+Irving reigned or the neat little Savoy where Gilbert and Sullivan won
+spurs and fortune. It is a great satisfaction to look down in comfort
+on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span> elbowing throng you have escaped, with its jostling and its
+stereotyped “I’m sorry,”—the top-hats and the caps, the actors,
+bohemians, professional men, tourists, tramps, beggars, thieves, Tommy
+Atkins in “pill-box” and “swagger,” blue-coated and yellow-legged boys
+of Christ’s Hospital, red-coated bootblacks, barmaids in turndown
+collars, well-dressed and shabbily-dressed women, as well as that
+particularly flashy brand to whom you return a “<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">Vade retro,
+Satanus!</i>” to her “Come to my arms, my slight acquaintance.” No
+wonder when Kipling’s “Private Ortheris” went mad of the heat in India
+that he babbled of the Adelphi Arches and the Strand!</p>
+
+<p>In the lull before the turning of the evening tide toward the
+opera and the theatre there is opportunity for each to indulge his
+<em>penchant</em>. What the shops of Fleet Street and the Strand show
+in general, the windows of specialists elsewhere are presenting in
+particular and with increased elaboration. Regent Street will draw
+the fanciers of pictures, leather goods, perfumes, and jewelry; Bond
+Street, rare paintings and choice porcelains; Wardour Street, curios
+and antiques; Stanway Street, silver and embroidery; Charing Cross
+Road, old bookstalls; and Hatton Garden, diamonds,—the same Hatton
+Garden that Queen Elizabeth gave a slice of to a favorite courtier
+and threatened the Bishop of Ely in a brief but sufficient note to
+hurry up with the necessary details or “I will unfrock you, by God!”
+This methodical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span> fashion of grouping certain interests in definite
+localities is carried even further; as, for example, should you feel
+the need of a physician it is not necessary to wade through the
+thirty-five hundred pages of Kelly’s Post-Office Directory, but take a
+taxi to Harley Street where any house can supply you. No matter where
+you ramble, surprises and delights await you. It will be found so to
+those in particular who stroll down Oxford Street—with thoughts,
+perhaps, of De Quincey when a starved and homeless little boy groping
+a timorous and whimpering way down this street as he clutched the hand
+of his new acquaintance; or of Hazlitt’s dramatic struggle with hunger
+and poverty—and suddenly, on reaching High Holborn, catch their first
+glimpse of the picturesque beauty of mediæval Staple Inn. There are
+few lovelier spots in all London, and the sparrows still chatter there
+as clamorously every evening as they did when Dr. Johnson frowned
+up at them from the manuscript of “Rasselas,” or when Dickens lived
+and worked there, or when Hawthorne visited and revisited it with
+increasing delight.</p>
+
+<p>The princely spaces in the neighborhood of Buckingham Palace are quite
+as attractive at this hour as when the afternoon sun is warm along
+fair Piccadilly—“radiant and immortal street,” said Henley—and
+the gay coaches clatter back toward Trafalgar Square with blasts of
+horn and jangling chains. The Mall, the Grand Walk for ages, fairly
+exhales class and pride in the deepening<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span> dusk of the late English
+twilight. The clubmen of Pall Mall and St. James’s Street, in their
+fine, imposing old houses, are taking up the question of the evening’s
+amusements with as much bored listlessness by the aristocrats at
+Brooks’s as rakish enthusiasm by the country gentlemen of Boodle’s.
+Signs of approaching activity are even to be observed in the stately
+mansions of exclusive Park Lane—a street that half the business men of
+London hope to be rich enough to live in some day; so effectually has
+time effaced the memory of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild and the rest
+of the air-dancing specialists who figured here in chains in the days
+when Tyburn Hill was a name to shudder over.</p>
+
+<p>But the appeal of the “halls,” which began when the curtains of the
+Alhambra and the Pavilion went up at seven-thirty, grows almost
+imperative as the hour wears around toward eight. The rank of waiting
+cabs up the middle of Haymarket is thinned to the merest trickle.
+“Heavy swells” of clubdom and the West End are strolling in groups
+across the wide, statue-dotted expanse of Trafalgar Square, stopping
+to scratch matches on the lions of Nelson’s Column or General Gordon’s
+granite base. The artists are forsaking the studios of Chelsea, the
+real bohemians—not the pretenders of the Savage Club and the Vagabond
+dinners—the cheap restaurants and the performing monkeys of Soho, the
+students their quiet quarters in Bloomsbury and the forty miles of
+book-shelves of the British Museum, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span> musicians their Baker Street
+lodgings up Madame Tussaud’s way, the literary people their charming
+Kensington, and even the gay Italians are deserting the organ-grinding
+on Saffron Hill and the disorder of St. Giles—and all are rapidly
+moving on Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, and the Strand. There
+they will view the elaborate ballets according to their means; from
+the “pit” for a shilling, or from a grand circle “stall” for seven
+shillings sixpence, with another sixpence to the girl usher for a
+programme loaded with advertisements. It is the hour when Pierce Egan
+would have summoned “Tom and Jerry” to be in at the inaugural of the
+night life of the great city, and Colonel Newcome would have marched
+Clive out of the “Cave of Harmony” to hear less offensive entertainers
+at the “halls.” It is the time Stevenson’s “New Arabian Nights” has
+invested with the richest potentiality for adventure, and when, in
+consequence, any polite tobacconist is likely suddenly to disclose
+himself as a reigning sovereign in disguise. Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
+Watson, you may be sure, are never in their Baker Street lodgings at
+such a time as this. In the preliminary uproar about the bars of the
+favorite cafés and in the flashing of electric signs, glare of lights,
+and rush of hansoms and motors, one may discern the beginnings of “a
+night of it” for many whom the early sun will surprise with bleared
+eyes and battered top-hats about the coffee-booths of Covent Garden.
+And, indeed, unless you have access to a club,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span> night-foraging is a
+highly difficult undertaking in London. Every restaurant closes down at
+half an hour after midnight; and thereafter, unless you come across a
+chance “luncheon-bar” that defies the authorities, or a friendly cabman
+introduces you to a “shelter,” you may have to content yourself with a
+hard-boiled egg at a coffee-stall. Many a sturdy Briton trudging along
+behind his linkman could have found better accommodation two hundred
+years ago when the watch went by with stave and lantern and cried out
+that it was two o’clock and a fine morning.</p>
+
+<p>With Big Ben in Parliament Watch Tower throwing his full thirteen tons
+into an effort to advise as many Londoners as possible that it is eight
+o’clock at last, and with a band concert in progress in the Villiers
+Street Garden of the Embankment, as agreeable a lounging-place as one
+could desire is the beautiful expanse of Waterloo Bridge. Not only
+is the prospect fair and inspiring, but the great bridge itself is
+worthy of it. Said Gautier, “It is surely the finest in the world”;
+said Canova, “It is worthy of the Romans.” Pallid and broad and long,
+and so level that its double lines of fine lights scarcely rise to the
+slightest of arcs, it rests with rare grace on its nine sweeping arches
+and spans the Thames just where the great bend is made to the east. One
+looks along it northward and sees the lamps of Wellington Street fade
+into the blurring dazzle of the Strand and Longacre, and southward to
+find the converging<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span> lights of Waterloo Road sending a bright arrow
+straight to the heart of Southwark. The greensward of the flowered
+and statued Embankment sweeps across and back on either side of its
+northern end, and palace hotels, Somerset House and the huge glass roof
+of Charing Cross Station bulk large at hand. Eastward the Ionic columns
+of Blackfriars Bridge and the strutting iron arches of Southwark Bridge
+stalk boldly across the serene river, and southwestward the broad arch
+of Westminster Bridge offers Parliament cheer to glum Lambeth. It would
+be the most natural mistake in the world to suppose the trim buildings
+of St. Thomas Hospital, on the Surrey bank, a favored row of handsome
+detached summer villas, with owners of strong political influence to be
+able to build on the fine long curve of the Albert Embankment, having
+no less a vis-à-vis than the terraces and glorious Gothic pile of
+Parliament buildings on their thousand feet of “noblest water front in
+the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Only the mind’s eye may look farther on to Chelsea and take note of the
+tall plane-trees of Cheyne Walk, and re-people the red brick terraces
+and homely old houses with Sir Thomas More entertaining Erasmus
+and Holbein, with Addison and Steele in revelry at Don Saltero’s
+coffee-house, with Byron at home in the amazing disorder of Leigh
+Hunt’s cottage, with Tennyson smoking long pipes with Carlyle, with
+Turner and Whistler bending over their palettes, and with Rossetti,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>
+Swinburne, and Meredith courting the Muses under a common roof and in a
+common brotherhood.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_243">
+<img src="images/i_243.jpg" alt="" width="413" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>To the observer on Waterloo Bridge the deep roar of the city comes
+out dulled and subdued. Bells chime softly and the whistles of the
+river-craft sound, from time to time, with sudden and startling
+shrillness. Long shafts of light shake out from either bank and spots
+of color from signal lamps dot the nearer rim. All outside is a
+bright dazzle, with patches of deep shadow and heavy ripples from the
+brown-sailed lighters and pert steamers that move across the shining
+reaches. The gloomy Southwark shore is blurred and uncertain in light
+mists, and the roof masses of the frowning city lift the ghostly
+fingers of Wren’s slender spires and cower beneath the indistinct and
+cloudlike silhouette of the dome of St. Paul’s. The prospect is that
+of a vast, confused expanse of indistinguishable, shadowy blending of
+buildings and foliage whose remoter verges merge into a soft violet
+blur, and over all of it rages a wild snowstorm of tiny pin-point
+lights. Under the arches of the bridge old Father Thames moves serenely
+seaward, the most ancient and yet ever the youngest member of the
+community. From his continual renewal of life one could believe that
+in some long-forgotten time he had won this reward when he, too, had
+achieved the Holy Grail among the stout knights up Camelot way “in
+the dayes of Vther pendragon when he was kynge of all Englond and so
+regned.” With true British reserve he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span> whispers to a stranger no word
+of such secrets as once he confided at this bridge to Dickens, of the
+savagery and cruelty of this London that has driven so many of its
+desperate children to peace within his sheltering arms,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Mad with life’s history,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Glad to death’s mystery</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Swift to be hurled—</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Anywhere, anywhere,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Out of the world.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Looking from one of these bridges on the proud, powerful,
+self-sufficient city, Wordsworth was once moved to exclaim that “earth
+has not anything to show more fair.” Certainly it has few things
+to show more stirring and impressive, few to move the heart more
+profoundly, few that in achievement, resourcefulness, and power embody
+more completely to men of to-day</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“The grandeur that was Rome.”</span><br>
+</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_247">
+<img src="images/i_247.jpg" alt="" width="409" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="NAPLES">NAPLES</h2>
+
+<p class="center">8 P.M. TO 9 P.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Drifting</span> lazily of a summer evening over the Bay of Naples in a brown
+old fishing felucca with a friendly ancient boatman for companion,
+careless of time or direction; the night winds soft; the moon clear;
+indolent boating-parties in joyous relaxation all about; languorous,
+plaintive songs of Italy near by and far away; Vesuvius glorious and
+mysterious in the purple offing, and the gray old city, touched with
+silver, beaming down from all her crescent hillsides,—here, indeed,
+is the stuff of which day dreams are compounded! Chimes in shadowy
+belfries take soft, musical notice of the hour; and my thoughts recede
+with those fading echoes and retrace the bright and pleasant stages
+that have led me this evening into an environment of such charm and
+romance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, then, it was. Two hours ago, as I loitered along the crowded
+Via Caracciolo on the Bay front and watched Neapolitan Fashion
+take the air, I again encountered my Old Man of the Sea at his
+landing-place,—swarthy, wrinkled Luigi of the hoop earrings and
+faded blue trousers rolled to the knees. Little was he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span> bothering his
+grizzled head over the frivolity that fluttered above him; and yet
+it was, in fact, a charming show. Old Luigi makes a mistake, in my
+opinion, in ignoring the elegant <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">passeggiata</i>; for afternoon
+promenading on the Caracciolo is something that most of Naples will do
+more than lift its head to see. Besides, what an attractive setting it
+has! The boasted park, the Villa Nazionale, arrays the western front
+in a pleasant old woods of broad and shady trees, along the water
+side of which stretches the handsome boulevard of the Caracciolo. The
+distinguishing mark is thus supplied to divide society between the
+carriage set who hector it here and along the Villa’s winding drives,
+and those lesser lights who venture to raise their heads secure from
+snubs in the promenading spaces under the trees and before the cafés
+and bandstand. With the latter, as the elders salute friends, renew
+acquaintances, and exchange civilities with jubilant exclamations,
+delighted shrugs, and storms of exultant gestures, the younger men,
+in flannel suits and foppish canes, flirt desperately by twirling
+their waxed little mustaches, and the snappy-eyed signorinas respond
+in kind by a subtle and discrete use of the fan. The contemplative
+promenader will stroll along the cool, statue-lined <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">allées</i>,
+issuing forth from time to time to enjoy the brisk music of the band.
+The hardened idler will take a mean delight in penetrating the retired
+and romantic retreats in the neighborhood of the Pæstum Fountain and
+thus arousing whole<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span> coveys of indignant lovers who have regarded this
+region as peculiarly their own from time immemorial; in the event of
+threatened reprisals the disturber can seek sanctuary in the renowned
+Aquarium, just at hand, and there spend his time to better advantage in
+contemplating octopi and sensitive plants, and all sorts of astonishing
+fishes. But the real show, of course, is <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en voiture</i>. With a
+clatter and dash along they come: The <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">jeunesse dorée</i>, with
+straw hats cocked rakishly, shouting loudly to their horses and sawing
+desperately on the reins; young beauties in the latest word of milliner
+and modiste loll back in handsome victorias, reveling in the sensation
+they are creating, and with great black eyes flashing in curious
+contrast to the studied placidity of their quiet faces; consequential
+senators down from Rome; fat merchants trying to appear at ease; and
+all the usual remnants of the fashionable rout. On the wide sidewalks
+the promenaders proceed leisurely and with more good-humored democracy:
+prim little girls with governesses; romping schoolboys in caps of all
+colors; back-robed students; long-haired <em>artisti</em>; and priests by
+the score strolling sedately and gesturing earnestly with dark, nervous
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>To all this brave parade Luigi turns a blind eye and a deaf ear; but he
+always manages to see me, I have noticed. This afternoon his programme
+was the attractive one of a sail down to the Cape of Posilipo for a
+fish-dinner at a rustic little <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ristoranti</i>, with the table to
+be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span> spread under a chestnut-tree on a weathered stone terrace at the
+water’s edge where the spray from an occasional wave-top could spatter
+the cloth and I might fleck the ashes of my cigar straight down into
+the Bay. This old fellow can interest any one, I believe, when he
+wrinkles up into his insinuating and enthusiastic grin and plays that
+trump card, “And after dinner, if the signore wish, we can drift about
+the Bay or sail over toward Capri and Sorrento.” Naturally, this is my
+cue to enter. Into the boat I go; off come hat, coat, collar, and tie,
+and up go sleeves to the shoulder. I am allowed the tiller, and the
+genial old fisherman stretches at his ease beside the slanting mast
+and lights a long, black, quill-stemmed cheroot. Now for comfort and
+romance and all the delights of Buchanan Read’s inspired vision:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent6">“I heed not if</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">My rippling skiff</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;—</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">With dreamful eyes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">My spirit lies</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Under the walls of Paradise.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_253">
+<img src="images/i_253.jpg" alt="" width="371" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">THE BAY OF NAPLES</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>From all garish distractions our little boat bore us in rippling
+leisure along the picturesque Mergellina front and under the long,
+villa-dotted heights of the Posilipo hillside, whose shadows crept
+slowly out on the waters as Apollo drove his flaming chariot beyond the
+ridge to seek the dread Sibyl of Cumæ. Nature has always been partial
+to her gay, irresponsible Naples, and this afternoon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span> she seemed
+resolved to outdo herself in clothing it with charm and beauty. Under
+the setting sun the entire sky over Posilipo became a gorgeous riot of
+crimson and gold, and the opposite Vesuvian shore basked with indolent
+Oriental listlessness in a brilliant deluge that penetrated the deepest
+recesses of its vineyards and fruited terraces. Through this magic
+realm of richest color we floated lightly, silently responsive to the
+varying phases of the calm and glorious sunset hour. In deepest content</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent6">“my hand I trail</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Within the shadow of the sail.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The region to which we lifted our eyes is one of veritable
+poet-worship. How incredible to think that on this hillside Lucullus
+has lived and Horace strolled and Virgil mused over his deathless
+verse! Look again, and under a clump of gnarled old trees one sees the
+latter’s venerated tomb. Over these waters came the pious Æneas with
+his Trojan galleys to question the Cumæan Sibyl; and since the age of
+fable what fleets of Carthage have passed around Cape Miseno, what
+barks of savage pirates, what brazen triremes of Rome, what armadas of
+Spain and navies of all the world! It staggers the mind to attempt to
+recall the scenes of war and pillage that have been enacted under the
+frowning brows of these storied hills during the last three thousand
+years.</p>
+
+<p>The wonderful sail was all too brief, and almost before I was aware
+the goal was at hand, and I stepped ashore<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span> at the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ristoranti</i>
+approved of Luigi and entered upon the promised joys. It was all as
+he had predicted; with possibly the exception of a few details he
+had discreetly neglected to warn me against. That it required four
+determined efforts and a threat of police to get the proper change when
+I came to settle the bill is really no jarring memory at all. It is the
+usual experience with the “forgetful” Neapolitan restaurant keeper. And
+what are foreigners for, anyway? And was it not worth something extra
+to have dined face to face with this glittering Bay, with the panorama
+of Naples on one hand and a sunset over Cape Miseno on the other? So
+with many bows and mutual civilities I parted with the zealous boniface
+and rejoined the waiting felucca. A light shove, and the shadows of
+the terrace fell behind us and we were out again on the Bay. Such are
+the alluring stages, among others, that may bring one eventually to an
+evening’s moonlight sail at Naples.</p>
+
+<p>Just now the bells rang eight. Luigi grows sentimental. Again he
+declines my cigars, stretches at his ease and produces another quilled
+specimen of government monopoly such as, when at home, he lights at the
+end of a smouldering rope dangling in a tobacco shop of the Mercato.
+In the gathering gloom one sees little now of the trellised paths of
+Posilipo, the white marble villas with their balconies and terraces, or
+the brilliant clustering roses gay against the glossy green of groves
+of lemons and oranges. In the darkness of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span> firs each cavern and
+grotto of this legend-haunted headland disappears and one can barely
+make out the wave-washed Rock of Virgil, at the farthest extremity,
+where, the Neapolitans will tell you, the poet was wont to practice his
+enchantments. The ruddy sky pales over the mouth of Avernus and the
+Elysian Fields, and Apollo abandons us to Diana and the broad flecking
+of the lights of Parthenope. We swing a wide circle in the offing.
+Between us and the distant rim of water-front lamps hundreds of light
+craft are idly floating. Romantic, pleasure-loving Naples has dined
+and taken to the water, to cheer its heart with laughter and song.
+Like glowworms the lights of the little boats lift and sway with the
+movement of the waves; while seaward, the drifting torches of fishermen
+flare in search of <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">frutti di mare</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Like an aged beauty Naples is at her best by night, when the ravages
+of time are concealed. Lights glitter brightly along the shore line
+from Posilipo to Sorrento and all over the hillsides, and even beyond
+Sant’ Elmo and the low white priory of San Martino the palace-crowned
+heights of Capodimonte, where the paper-chases of early spring
+afford so much diversion to the young gallants of the court. Popular
+restaurants up the hillsides are marked by groups of colored lights.
+A thick spangle of lamps proclaims the progress of some neighborhood
+<em>festa</em>. The moon is full; the sky brilliant with enormous stars.
+In the distance the curling smoke<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span> of Vesuvius glows with a sultry red
+or fades fitfully into gloomy tones, as suits that imperious will which
+threescore of eruptions have rendered absolute. But, as all the world
+knows, this aged beauty of a city that “lights up” so well by night is
+far from “plain” by day. Then appears the charm and distinction of the
+original way she has of parting her hair, as it were, with the great
+dividing rocky ridge that runs downward from Capodimonte to Sant’ Elmo
+and then on to Pizzofalcone, “Rock of the Falcon.” She even secures
+a coquettish touch in the projecting point, like an antique necklace
+pendant, at the centre of her double-crescented shore, where juts a low
+reef and at its end rests the ancient, blackened Castello dell’Ovo,—on
+a magically supported egg, they say,—the accredited theatre of so many
+extravagant adventures. And by day she looks down in indolent content
+through the half-closed eyes of ten thousand windows and surveys a
+glorious sea of milky blue, brimming tawny curving beaches crowned with
+white villas in luxuriant groves and vineyards, expanding in turquoise
+about soft headlands and dim precipices, and bearing, on its smooth,
+restful bosom in the far, faint offing, magical islands of pink and
+pearl that seem no more than tinted clouds.</p>
+
+<p>A shoal of skiffs hangs under the black hull of a belated liner, whose
+rails are crowded with new arrivals delighted at so picturesque and
+enthusiastic a reception, and whose silver falls merrily into the
+inverted umbrellas<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span> of the boys and girls who are singing and dancing
+in the little boats by the light of flaming torches. Very shortly these
+visitors will learn that the interest they excite in Neapolitans is
+to be measured very strictly in terms of ready cash. Secretly, they
+will be despised. There is no smile-hid rapacity comparable with that
+encountered here. The incoming steamer has not yet warped into her
+berth before the Neapolitan has begun his campaign for money. Beggars
+crawl out on the pier flaunting their hideous deformities and wailing
+for <em>soldi</em>, and insulting cabmen lie in ambush at the gates. At
+no other port does a foreigner disembark with so much embarrassment.
+He goes ashore feeling like a lamb marked for the shearing, and lives
+to fulfill the expectation with humiliating dispatch. It has to be
+admitted, on the other hand, that the customs-officers occasionally
+catch strange flashes of transmarine interests that must puzzle them
+not a little. As an instance, the first person to land from the steamer
+I was on was a young American athlete in desperate quest of the latest
+daily paper, and bent, as we presumed, upon securing instant word of
+some matter of great and immediate importance. He succeeded; but what
+was our astonishment to behold him a minute later leap and shout for
+joy and announce to every one about him that Princeton had again won
+the Yale baseball series and remained the college champions!</p>
+
+<p>Naples, to-night, is vibrant with song; faithful to her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span> ancient
+myth of the nymph Parthenope, whose sweet singing long lured men to
+destruction until Ulysses withstood it and the chagrined goddess cast
+herself into the sea and perished and her body floated to these shores.
+Parthenope’s children here do not destroy people by their singing now,
+but rather delight and revitalize them. Mandolins and guitars are
+throbbing softly on every hand and the old familiar songs of Naples
+fill the air. “Traviata,” “Trovatore,” and the “Cavalleria” reign
+prime favorites. To be sure, there is no escaping the linked sweetness
+of the wailing “Sa-an-ta-a Lu-u-ci-a,” nor that notion of perpetual
+and hilarious youth conveyed in the ubiquitous “Funiculì-Funiculà.”
+In martial staccato, as of old, Margarita, the love-lorn seamstress,
+is jestingly warned against Salvatore,—“<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">Mar-ga-rì, ’e perzo a
+Salvatore!</i>”—and the skittish “Frangese” recites for the millionth
+time the discouraging experience of the giddy young peddler who
+undertook to barter his “pretty pins from Paris” in exchange for kisses
+that would only bring “a farthing for five” in Paradise. More than one
+singer is deploring the heartless coquetry of “La Bella Sorrentina,”
+while as many more appeal amorously to the charming Maria with promises
+of “beds of roseleaves,”—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent6">“Ah! Maria Marì!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Quanta suonna che perdo pe te!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>We take an æsthetic interest in the Pagliaccian ravings<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span> of Canio, and
+grieve for the “little frozen hands” of “La Bohème”; while, by way of
+contrast, all the peace and serenity of moonlight comes to us in the
+chaste, stately measures of the pensive “Luna Nova.” Serenades seem
+twice serenades when breathed in the soft, lissome dialect of Naples.
+There is no tiring of the impassioned refrain of “Sole Mio”:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Ma n’ atu sole</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Cchiu bello, ohinè,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">’O sole mio</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Sta nfronte a te!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And what sufficient word can be said of the lovely “A Serenata d’ ’e
+Rrose”? It is impossible not to rejoice with these soulful tenors in
+that</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“The glinting moonbeams look like silver pieces</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Flung down among the roses by the breezes,”—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>or to respond to the plaintive intensity of the appealing cry:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Oj rrose meje! Si dorme chesta fata</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Scetatela cu chesta serenata!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Like old Ulysses, the swift little felucca soon stops its ears to
+these fascinating distractions, and bears Luigi and me off into the
+purple darkness. The prison-capped rock of Nisida drops astern with
+all its august memories of Brutus and his devoted Portia, and its
+repugnant ones of Queen Joanna, the very bad, and King Robert, the
+very good. In the moonlit path the distant cliffs of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span> Procida, isle
+of romance and beauty, loom afar, but we distinguish no faintest echo
+of the bewildering <em>tarantella</em> music that is danced there in
+its perfection. What a different spectacle its observers are enjoying
+from the stale perfunctory performances of the Sorrento hotels, which
+the tourists see at two dollars a head. For the <em>tarantella</em>,
+well done, is the intensest and most expressive of dances. All
+the emotions of the lover and his coquettish sweetheart are aptly
+portrayed—the advances, rebuffs, encouragements, slights, and final
+triumph. The Procida dance is a revelation when rendered out of sheer
+delight—<em>con amore</em>, as the Italians say.</p>
+
+<p>An occasional faint light marks dissolute Rome’s favorite place of
+revelry, Baiæ the magnificent. In its heyday every house, as we read,
+was a palace; and it has been said that every woman who entered it a
+Penelope came out a Helen. Through their faded green blinds no light
+may be seen in the yellow stone houses of neighboring Puteoli where
+Paul, Timothy, and Luke took refuge in the early days of the Faith.
+Stolid pagan Rome had little time for them, considering that Cumæ was
+just around the headland, with Dædalus landing from his flight from
+Crete and the frantic Sibyl, at the very Jaws of Avernus, screaming her
+“Dies iræ! Dies illa!”</p>
+
+<p>Distant Ischia appears a huge ghostly blot, mysterious and solemn.
+Scarce an outline can be caught of its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span> fabled, crag-hung castle,
+chambered as the very nautilus and eloquent of the unhappy Vittoria
+Colonna. How often has Michael Angelo climbed with sighs that old stone
+causeway where now the fishermen mend their blackened nets! Ischia
+never wants for devotees, however, and already a quarter-century has
+sufficed to dull the horror of that July night when Casamicciola paid
+its quota of three thousand lives to the dread greed of the earthquake.
+To-day one lingers, undisturbed by such memories, amidst the pretty
+whitewashed cottages set in olive groves and vineyards, loiters among
+the picturesque straw plaiters of Lacco, or dreams to the drowsy tinkle
+of goat bells in the myrtle and chestnut groves on the slopes of Mont’
+Epomeo.</p>
+
+<p>Shadowy Capri, isle of enchantment, lies soft and dim off the Sorrento
+headland as we swing our little vessel toward the city. It seems only a
+delightful dream that a few mornings ago my <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">déjeuner</i> was served
+on a cool terrace of the Quisisana there, and that I looked down over
+the coffee-urn on olive groves and sloping hillsides green with famous
+vineyards. With joy I relive the row around its precipitous shores, the
+eerie swim in the elfland of the Blue Grotto, the drive down the white,
+dusty road from the lofty perch of Anacapri to the pebbly beaches of
+Marina Grande, before a fascinating, unfolding panorama of verdant
+lawns, fruited terraces, snowy villas, and bold cliffs crowned with
+fantastic ruins. Sinister Tiberius and his unspeakable companions have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>
+small place in our permanent memories of Capri; one is more apt to
+recall the charming blue and white Virgin in the cool grotto beside the
+old Stone Stairs.</p>
+
+<p>A faint rim of lights on the mainland marks Sorrento, and a patch
+nearer the city, Castellammare; and were we nearer, the great white
+hotels would doubtless be found brilliant and musical. Could we but
+see it now, we should find the moonlit statue of Tasso in the little
+square vastly more tolerable than by day, and this would be a pleasant
+hour to spend on the old green bench before it absorbed in stirring
+thoughts of the “Gerusalemme Liberata” in the place where its author
+was born. Monte Sant’ Angelo looms above Castallammare spectre-like
+in night shadows, and the royal ilex groves must be taken on faith.
+The crested hoopoes, crowned of King Solomon, have long been asleep on
+the mountain-sides, but Italian Fashion, devoted to its Castellammare,
+having idled and rested all day in the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">bagni</i>, now flirts and
+dances at the verandaed <em>stabilimenti</em>. An occasional faint breath
+of fragrance recalls the floral luxuriance that is so notable here—the
+gorgeous scarlet geraniums, snowy daturas, cactus, and aloe, festoons
+of smilax, and the carmine oleanders that they call “St. Joseph’s
+Nosegay.”</p>
+
+<p>Far away to the southeastward, vague and ghostly headlands are dimming
+toward regions of rarest beauty—Amalfi, Majori, Cetara, Salerno.
+In our happy thoughts the smooth, white Corniche road lies like a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>
+delicate thread along the green mountain-sides,—those Mountains of the
+Blest, whose rounded brows home the nightingale, whose shoulders are
+terraces of fruits of the tropics and whose storied feet rest eternally
+on white beaches that glisten in the blue waters of a matchless bay.
+A memory this, compounded of pebbly, curving shores sweeping around
+soft, distant headlands; lustrous groves of pomegranates and oranges;
+picturesque fishing hamlets of little stone houses nestled away in
+deep, shady inlets; the patter and shuffle of barefooted women trotting
+steadily through the dust under great hampers of lemons; sunburned
+workmen singing homeward through the dusk; the shouts and laughter
+of bare-headed fishermen drawing their red-bottomed boats up on the
+shore; and the low, contented singing of your Neapolitan coachman
+who, as twilight falls, looks long and dreamily out to sea and no
+longer cracks his whip over the weary little Barbary ponies that are
+drawing you up the dusty heights toward the cool rose-pergola of the
+Cappuccini. Visitors, reluctantly departing, will never forget this
+land “where summer sings and never dies,” and must ever after feel with
+Longfellow:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Sweet the memory is to me</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of a land beyond the sea,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Where the waves and mountains meet,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Where, amid her mulberry-trees,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sits Amalfi in the heat,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Bathing ever her white feet</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In the tideless summer seas.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span></p>
+<p>We distinguish Torre Annunciata, abreast of our speeding boat, by the
+evil redolence of its swarming fish markets and the boisterous shouting
+of its many children at <em>mora</em>; and, in striking contrast, one
+thinks of grim Pompeii, farther inland,—“la città morta,”—hushed and
+prostrate in moonlit desolation. At the neighboring Torre del Greco we
+can fancy the coral fishers, who may not yet have left for the season’s
+diving off Sicily, to be smoking black cheroots along the wharves and
+planning lively times when they market their coral and Barbary ponies
+in November. Certainly there is little to suggest the peace that
+Shelley found here. Few shores are more dramatic than those of this
+Vesuvian Campagna Felice. Resina hangs gloomily over the entrance to
+the entombed Herculaneum, and Portici lights up but half-heartedly,
+abashed that all her royal Bourbon palaces should now be housing only
+schoolboys. About both villages and for miles inland any one may see
+the wrath of Vesuvius in dismal evidence in twisted lava rock of
+weird and sinister shapes. But there is a fullness of life on these
+shores to-night, increasing as our boat advances; individual houses
+multiply into villages, and villages overlap into a solid mass that
+is Naples’s East End. We pick our way among the clustering boats, and
+around long piers with little lighthouses at their ends, and presently
+Luigi abandons his cheroot, stands up by the mast and shouts shrill and
+mysterious hails, and shortly up we come to our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span> landing at a flight of
+dripping stone steps at the tatterdemalion Villa del Popolo, sea-gate
+to the noisiest, dirtiest, most crowded (and so most characteristic)
+section of all Naples. A passing of silver from me, from Luigi a
+twisted smile and a regretful “buon riposo,”—the last, I fear, that I
+shall ever hear from him,—and I take leave of my amiable companion for
+the sputtering lights and exciting diversions of the swarming Carmine
+Gate and Mercato. From the tide-washed Castello dell’ Ovo to the prison
+heights of Sant’ Elmo and the charming cloisters of San Martino, and
+from the huts of the Mergellina fishermen to far beyond where I am
+standing on the eastern front of the city, all Naples is sparkling with
+lights and humming with an intense and multi-phased tumult.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer falling from Paradise must have experienced some such
+contrast as those who exchange the serene evening beauty of the Bay
+of Naples for the odors, uproar, and confusion of the Mercato. But
+does not the saying run, “See Naples and die”? And to miss visiting so
+characteristic a district by night is almost to fail to see “Naples”
+at all; though it may, perhaps, appear at first glance to assure the
+“and die.” The quay of Santa Lucia is the only other section that even
+attempts to rival this in preserving unimpaired the “best” traditions
+of Neapolitan uproar and picturesque squalor. And it must be remembered
+that one’s interest in this city is like that felt for a pretty,
+bright, and amiable child<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span> who is, at the same time, a very ragged and
+dirty one. Life, as it is found in the Mercato, is exuberance <em>in
+extenso</em>; the most complete conception possible of a “much ado
+about nothing.” It is an irrelevant tumult in which matter-of-fact
+inconsequences are expressed with an incredibly disproportionate use
+of shoulders, fingers, and lungs. An inquiry as to the time of day
+is attended with a violence of gesticulation adequate to convey the
+emotions of Othello slaying Desdemona; an observation on the weather
+involves a pounding of the table and a wild flourish of arms like the
+expiring agony of an octopus. Even work itself seems half play in its
+accompaniment of romantic posturing, eloquent and profuse gestures, and
+continual over-bubbling of merriment, quarrels, and song. All this is
+of the very essence of the Mercato—hopelessly tattered and unkempt,
+artlessly unconscious of its picturesque rags, and altogether so
+frankly frowzy and disheveled as to become, upon the whole, positively
+charming. No one equals the Neapolitan in expressing the full force of
+the Scotch proverb, “Little gear the less care.”</p>
+
+<p>In appearance the Mercato is a rabbit-warren of tortuous chasms lined
+with dowdy structures in every advanced stage of decrepitude. Even its
+lumbering churches of Spanish baroque rather add to than detract from
+this effect. No money is squandered on upkeep. The cost of initial
+construction is here like an author’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span> definitive edition,—final.
+Little, cramped balconies, innocent of paint, blink under the
+flapping of reed-made shades, shop signs are illegible from dirt and
+discoloration, and the weathered house-fronts shed scales of plaster
+as snakes do skins. The very skies are overcast with clouds of other
+people’s laundry. Dead walls flame with lurid theatre posters, unless
+warned off by the “post-no-bills” sign—the familiar “è vietata l’
+affissione.” Cheap theatres are completely covered with life-size
+paintings illustrating scenes from the play for the week. Lottery signs
+abound. Certain window placards, by their very insistence, eventually
+become familiar and homelike; as, for instance, the “first floor to
+let,” the omnipresent “si loca, appartamento grande, 1<sup>o</sup> primo,” for
+which one comes in time to look as for a face from home. Religion
+contributes a garish and tawdry decorative feature in the little gaudy
+shrines on street corners and house-fronts, where, in a sort of shadow
+box covered with glass, candles sputter before painted saints. The
+government monopolies, salt and tobacco, the Siamese Twins of Italy,
+are inseparable with their ever-lasting “Sale e Tabacchi” signs and
+dwell together everywhere on a common and friendly footing, like the
+owls, snakes, and prairie dogs in Kansas.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity fairly plunges a man into so promising a field, and Adventure
+stalks at his elbow. He finds the narrow, squalid streets brimming
+with a restless, noisy, nervous swarm. Picturesque qualities are
+brought out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span> in the play of feeble street lamps and the dejected,
+half-hearted lights of dingy, cavernous shops and eating-places. A
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">comme il faut</i> costume for men appears to be limited to trousers
+and shirt, with the latter worn open to the belt. The women affect
+toilettes of a general dirty disarray which their laudable interest
+in the life around frequently leads them absent-mindedly to arrange
+in the quasi-retirement of the doorways, the front sill itself being
+reserved for the popular diversion of combing the hair of their spawn
+of half-naked children. To traverse an alley and avoid stepping on some
+rollicking youngster <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">in puris naturalibus</i> is vigorous exercise
+of the value of a calisthenic drill. Still, it is possible to escape
+the babies, but scarcely the fakirs and beggars. The fakir has odds and
+ends of everything to sell and teases for patronage for love of all
+the saints; one even awaits the Oriental announcement, “In the name of
+the Prophet, figs!” The beggars, of course, are worse; crawling across
+your path and dragging themselves after you to display their physical
+damages, often self-inflicted, in quest of a <em>soldo</em> of sympathy.
+Express compassion in other than monetary terms and you get it back
+instanter, along with a dazing assortment of vitriolic maledictions. As
+the visitor’s patience gives way under the strain, it presently becomes
+a very pretty question as to whose language is the most horrific, his
+own or the beggar’s.</p>
+
+<p>Women dodge through the streets carrying great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span> bundles on their
+heads, and pause from time to time for friendly greetings with frowzy
+acquaintances tilting out of the upper windows where the laundry
+hangs. It is from these mysterious upper windows that the housewife
+in the morning lowers a pail and a bit of money wrapped in a piece of
+newspaper, and bargains with the leather-lunged <em>padulano</em> when
+he comes loafing along beside his panniered donkey, crying his wares
+in that “carrying voice” we all admire in our opera singers. Those are
+the hours of trying domestic exaction, when the woman who does not
+care for water in the milk watches the production of the raw material
+with the cow standing at the doorway, or from the frolicsome goat
+that nimbly ascends every flight of stairs to the very portal of the
+combined kitchen and sleeping-room. But just now neighbors are shouting
+conversations in those same upper windows, or calling down to the women
+and girls who go shuffling along on the lava pavement below in wooden
+sabots that look like bath-slippers—if, indeed, one has imagination
+enough to think of bath-slippers in this vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>Restless activity prevails. The most unnatural things are the statues,
+chiefly because they do not move. One catches glimpses of them now
+and then in the niches of the motley-marbled churches,—churches of
+memories grave and gay, of Boccaccio’s first glimpse of Fiammetta, or
+the slaying of the young fisherman-tribune, Masaniello, whom Salvator
+Rosa delighted to paint. There<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span> is buying and selling, eating and
+drinking. There are fruit stands and lemonade stalls and macaroni
+stores and dejected little shops with festoons of vegetables pendent
+from the smoky ceilings over whose home-painted counters weary women
+await custom with babies in their arms. A brisk demand prevails for the
+famous cheese-flavored biscuit called “pizza,” set with little powdered
+fish, and those who desire can have a slice of devilfish-tentacle for
+a <em>soldo</em>, which the purchaser dips in the kettle of hot water
+and devours on the spot. Should this latter fare disagree with any
+one, there will be access on the morrow to the miracle-working “La
+Bruna”—the picture of the Virgin in the church of St. Mary of the
+Carmine—which every child in Naples knows was painted by St. Luke;
+and if that should fail, there is still the liquefying blood of St.
+Januarius in the inner shrine of the cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, the senses are more than four; and when seeing, smelling,
+tasting, and feeling fail from over-exertion in the Mercato, still
+hearing remains, so that one may study the Sicilian-like prattle of the
+Neapolitan in all its ramifications from a whisper to a shriek. The
+character of the man is expressed along with it; and thus one observes
+that while a Piedmontese may be steady and industrious, a Venetian
+gossipy and artistic, a Tuscan reserved and frugal, and a Roman proud
+and lordly, the Neapolitan is merry, loquacious, generous, quarrelsome,
+superstitious, and, too frequently, vicious.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span> Thus the Mafia flourishes
+with him, and the Camorra, an unbegrudged possession, is wholly his
+own. His <em>vendetta</em> may, perhaps, be mildly defended on the ground
+that it is, at least, only a personal affair, and certainly less
+foolish and reprehensible than the perennial jealousy of an entire
+people, as, for example, the ancient feud between Florence and Siena,
+where an inherited antagonism is still devoutly cherished and the old
+battle of Montaperti refought with fury every morning. The Neapolitan
+had rather spend that time on the lottery, dream his lucky numbers,
+look them up in his dream-book, and go to the Saturday afternoon
+drawings with a fresh and stimulating interest in life.</p>
+
+<p>It is a nice question whether the Mercato loves singing best, or
+eating—when it can get it. At night one inclines to the latter view.
+There is a prodigious hubbub around all the open-air cooking-stoves
+and in every smoky <em>trattoria</em> and family eating-place. One would
+scarcely hazard an opinion as to the number of bowls of macaroni,
+quantities of <em>polenta</em>, and whole nations of snails and frogs
+that are being devoured between appreciative gestures and puffs of
+cigarettes, and washed down unctiously with <em>minestra</em> soup and
+watery wines. But as all these good people have probably breakfasted
+solely on dry bread and black coffee, no one would think of begrudging
+them the delight they are taking in dining so gayly and at so modest
+an outlay. If stricter economy becomes necessary later, they will
+patronize the charity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span> “kitchens,” where soup, vegetables, meat, and
+wine are supplied at cost, or perhaps some friend will give them a
+voucher and they will be able to get it all for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>So far as economy is concerned, they know all there is to be learned
+on the subject. Several families of them will live in a single room;
+and when that room is the damp, foul cellar they call <em>fondaco</em>,
+it is something one does not care to think of a second time. When they
+indulge in street-car riding they never neglect to take the middle
+seats, because they are the cheapest. They know all about the market
+for restaurant scraps and cigar stumps, where quotations are governed
+by length.</p>
+
+<p>Their extraordinary generosity to one another in times of distress is
+almost proverbial. Misery both fascinates and touches them, perhaps
+because it is never very far from their own doors. One morning I
+shouldered my way into the middle of a strangely silent crowd and found
+there a weeping crockery vender whose entire stock in trade had been
+demolished by some mishap. It meant his temporary ruin, as could be
+seen from the faces of the painfully silent and sympathetic audience.
+The peddler seemed utterly stunned by his misfortune and lay on the
+ground with his face in his arms. How touching it was to see the little
+cup that some one had significantly set beside him, and to know that
+every copper-piece that fell into it came from Poverty’s Very Self,
+and bore the message, “It’s hard, poor fellow; we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span> know how hard; but
+here’s a little something—try again.”</p>
+
+<p>But, as Thomas Hardy’s peasants say, it is time to go “home-along.”
+Emerging from the noisy congestion of the Mercato the quiet and cool
+of the water front is rather more than refreshing. The shipping along
+the Strada Nuova stands out stately and picturesque, silvered toward
+the moon and black in the dense shadows. Harbor lights sparkle brightly
+under the solemn eye of the <em>molo</em> lighthouse. The military pier
+points a long, black finger warningly toward Vesuvius. Along the
+Strada del Piliero one has pleasant choice of viewing on the left the
+animated steamer piers and the secure anchorage where the great ships
+for Marseilles and the Orient tug mildly at their hawsers, or seeing
+on the right the ceaseless activity of swarming little streets, some
+glowing in arbors of colored lights in celebration of a neighborhood
+<em>festa</em> and others observing a milder form of the same noisy
+programme we have just forsaken. On the broad Piazza del Municipio the
+massive and heavy-towered Castello Nuovo rears a sombre and storied
+front; and farther along we pass the vast gray bulk of the famous
+Teatro San Carlo and the lofty crossed-arcade of the Galleria Umberto
+I, and skirting the corner of the Royal Palace enter the broad and
+brilliant Piazza del Publiscito.</p>
+
+<p>Contrasts again! What a different crowd from that of the poor Mercato.
+Here is a groomed and well-conducted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span> multitude that has come out
+to enjoy its coffee and cigarettes as it listens to the band in the
+pavilion on the western side or the open-air melodrama in that on the
+east. And what a change in surroundings! Palaces and splendid churches
+and public buildings, now. Solemn effigies of departed kings stare
+stonily down from niches in the moonlit façades. A fringe of dark-eyed
+boys lounges in indolent content around the coping of a fountain.
+Hundreds of chairs and tables throng the open space, and we gladly rest
+on one of them and experiment with Nocera and lemon juice, preparatory
+to a good-night stroll up the Toledo. Enthusiasm prevails here, too.
+Familiar melodies from the old operas are welcomed with storms of
+applause and shouts of “Bravo” or “Bis”; whereupon the conductor bows
+profound gratification and selects the music for the next number with a
+face glowing with pride. Politeness abounds. The air is gracious with
+“grazie,” and like expressions of courtesy. Ask a light for your cigar,
+and the Neapolitan raises his hat and thanks you, supplies the match,
+raises his hat and thanks you again, though all the while he has been
+doing the service. Indeed, he seems capable of expressing more civility
+by a touch of the hat than we can by completely doffing ours. One looks
+about and concludes that the women are not particularly pretty and that
+good dressing is a lost art with them. The men, as a rule, impress one
+more favorably; though they are perversely inclined to spoil their good
+looks by waxing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span> their mustaches to a needle-point and trimming their
+long beards square, like bas-reliefs of Assyrian kings.</p>
+
+<p>It is nearly nine o’clock. I settle for my drink, leave the usual
+centesimi with the bowing waiter, and plunge into the Broadway of
+Naples, the renowned Toledo. Its map-name is Via Roma, but the “Toledo”
+it has been for ages and as such it will remain to many Neapolitans
+to the end of time. It is a busy and peculiar street. Rows of raised
+awnings in two long, converging lines dress the feet of tall, dark
+buildings that are studded with shallow iron balconies filled with
+pots of flowers. It is comparatively narrow and with sadly straitened
+sidewalks, but no street in Naples is so long or so continually used;
+if it is followed, through all its changes of names, it will carry one
+past the Museo and away up to the very doors of the summer palace at
+Capodimonte, running due north all the way. Shops of all descriptions
+line it, and it is thronged to the overflow of the sidewalks and the
+hysterical abuse of distracted cabmen in the middle of the street. One
+thinks of Paris when he sees the newspaper kiosks and the many bright
+little stands decked out with fruit and gay trifles. The shops satisfy
+any taste and any purse, for it is the common gathering-ground of
+Naples.</p>
+
+<p>It is vastly diverting to step aside and take note of the varieties
+of people that troop along this brilliant highway. One sees jaunty
+naval cadets from Leghorn; street dandies in white duck and tilted
+Panamas;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span> delivery boys in long blue blouses; tattered and bare-headed
+bootblacks, with sleeves rolled up in business fashion; <em>artisti</em>
+in greasy coats; minor government officials in spectacles and
+rusty black, trying to be rakish on four hundred dollars a year;
+sub-lieutenants, with their month’s thirty dollars in hand, off to
+lose it at cards at some <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">circolo</i>; swarthy <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">contadini</i>,
+the farmer “Rubes” of Italy, having disposed of their poultry and
+their wives’ straw plaiting, are here “doing the town”; groups of
+impoverished laborers from near-by estates, lamenting with despairing
+gestures the impending failure of the olive crop and charging it
+to ghosts and the evil eye; venders of coral and tortoise shell;
+resplendent Carabinieri in pairs, fanning themselves with their
+picturesque chapeaux; thrifty policemen pursuing street peddlers, with
+an eye to a per centum of the fines; heroic school-ma’ams, trying to
+forget that their miserable one hundred and fifty dollars per annum is
+not likely to save them from such distress as De Amicis tells of in his
+impressive “Romanzo d’ un Mestro”; that odd military <em>rara avis</em>,
+the Bersagliero, pruning his glossy feathers and looking quite equal to
+a trot to Posilipo and back; rioting students, still unreconciled to
+having been “ploughed” at the recent examinations, or having failed of
+the coveted <em>laurea</em> degree when, frock-coated and nervous, they
+discussed their theses unsuccessfully before the jury of examiners; the
+pompous syndic of some commune; priests in black cassocks and fuzzy,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>
+broad-brimmed hats; some prefect returning from a many-coursed dinner,
+intent upon political <em>coups</em> when the Government’s candidates
+come up for election; and, most dejected and dangerous of all, the
+unemployed men of education, the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">spostati</i>, who will hunt
+government jobs while there is any hope and then turn Socialists in
+Lombardy or Camorristi in Naples.</p>
+
+<p>All along the way the soda fountains are sputtering and the “American
+Bars” bustling. Bookstores fascinate here, as everywhere, and shining
+leather volumes cry out for attention in the names of D’Annunzio, De
+Amicis, Verga, and Fogazzaro. “Il Trionfo della Morta” lifts its slimy
+head on every counter, side by side with the breezy Neapolitan stories
+of Signora Serao. I always look curiously, but so far unsuccessfully,
+to find a single bookstore window that does not contain that national
+family table ornament, the “I Promessi Sposi” of Manzoni—the man for
+whom Verdi composed the immortal Requiem Mass.</p>
+
+<p>The Toledo tide runs northward for twenty blocks or so from where we
+entered it, swings around the marble statue of Dante in the poet’s
+piazza, and sets south again. At nine o’clock it begins to diverge
+into the Strada di Chiaja, where there is music and promenading until
+midnight.</p>
+
+<p>Detecting this hint of the hour, I hail a venerable, loose-jointed cab
+and bargain to be taken to my great, sepulchral, marble-floored room on
+the Corso Vittorio<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span> Emmanuele. Now, cabs are cheap in Naples—after you
+have paid a penalty of extortion for the first few days’ experience;
+the real expense concerns the tailor as much as the cabman, in wear
+and tear to clothing, trying to keep on the seat as you bounce along
+over these volcanic-block pavements. This evening the cabman starts the
+usual trouble by demanding threefold the legal fare, and as we work it
+down to the tariff rate he insults me pleasantly and volubly, and I
+try to do as well by him. At length we arrive at a quasi-satisfactory
+basis; he shrugs contemptuous acceptance of my terms and I relax to the
+point of conceding that his ponies are only a little worse-groomed than
+the average and have, as far as I can see, all the mountainous brass
+fixtures prescribed by custom, along with the coral horn that will save
+me from the evil eye. So in I clamber. There is an infantry volley of
+whip-cracking and a burst of wild invective at the obstructing crowd
+and my head snaps back with sufficient force to keep me quiet to the
+journey’s end.</p>
+
+<p>On the pleasant little balcony of my room I dare not linger long
+to-night. Well I know the busy programme of the departure on the
+morrow. There will be a hurried stop for one last hasty look into the
+Museo, with my luggage on the waiting cab outside; then, at my urgent
+“Fa presto,” some reckless Jehu will rattle me over the stones to the
+station; I will go down into my pocket again, in the old familiar way,
+for seventy centesimi and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span> an additional <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pourboire</i> to the cabby;
+and twenty more for the spry old porter who will shoulder my grips into
+the smoker; and the conductor will blow a horn, and the station bell
+will ring, and the engineer will blow a whistle,—in their rare Italian
+manner,—and the wheels will begin to squeak and groan, and I shall be
+off for Rome.</p>
+
+<p>And that is why a cigar lacks its usual solace on my balcony to-night;
+the last I am to smoke in Good Night to this fascinating city. The
+subdued hum of cheery, happy revelry, mingled with music and song,
+drifts up from the bright squares and animated streets. The minutes
+multiply as I dwell over the varying phases of old Vesuvius, or gaze
+long and lingeringly over the star-lit Bay and all the romantic
+playground of these grown-up children. One cannot bring himself to
+say a definite farewell to this beautiful Region of Revisitors. With
+a yearning hope of returning some other day, he moderates it to a
+heartfelt Good Night and a tentative “till we meet again”:—</p>
+
+<p class="center">“A rivederci, Napoli! Benedicite e buon riposo!”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_283">
+<img src="images/i_283.jpg" alt="" width="425" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="HEIDELBERG">HEIDELBERG</h2>
+
+<p class="center">9 P.M. TO 10 P.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">There stands an ancient castle</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">On yonder mountain height,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Where, fenced with door and portal,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Once tarried steed and knight.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">But gone are door and portal,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And all is hushed and still;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O’er ruined wall and rafter</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I clamber as I will.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Goethe’s</span> “Castle on the Mountain.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> the sun has gone down behind the Blue Alsatian Mountains and the
+last stain of color has faded from the skies of the Rhenish plain, when
+clock tower has answered clock tower and evening bell responded to
+evening bell from the mountain streams and mill wheels of the Odenwald
+to the busy squares of Mannheim, then the quiet and gentle valley of
+the Neckar takes on a peculiar peace and glory that is exquisite and
+marvelous, and Heidelberg and its lordly ruins seem set in a veritable
+fairy-ring of delicate charm and beauty. So tranquil and lovely is
+this region in the early evening that even the latest comer soon feels
+a comforting sense of having turned aside from out of the rush and
+fever of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span> life into a singularly placid and protected corner of earth,
+a hushed and happy Vale of Tempe. This sense of rest and seclusion is
+one of Heidelberg’s strongest appeals—and her appeals, though few, are
+all emphatic. For there are no “sights” here, the castle excepted. The
+quaint old town is friendly and genial, though not more so than many
+others of this comfortable German father-land; nor is the serene Neckar
+so exceptional as to occasion pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>Heidelberg’s appeals are to the mind, the heart, and the senses: the
+mind is inspired by her impressive achievements in learning; the heart
+is touched by her tragic history; and the senses are spellbound by the
+exceptional charm of her natural beauty. She is never so fair as in the
+early evening. With the soft fall of night each blemish fades away, and
+what remains to see and feel is altogether rare and lovely.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_287">
+<img src="images/i_287.jpg" alt="" width="437" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">HEIDELBERG, FROM THE CASTLE TERRACE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the valley clocks are booming nine with muffled strokes it is
+delightful to be up in the castle’s ruins, lounging on the Great
+Balcony of the crumbling Friedrich Palace, with a broad coping for a
+seat and the rustling ivy of the hollow walls for a pillow. Behind
+and about one is the vast, ruddy wreckage of the knightly halls and
+towers of this far-famed “Alhambra of Germany,” and fluttering plains
+of tree-tops are billowing upward on every hand to the dark heights of
+the Königsstuhl. On the opposite side of the valley, across the river,
+dense forests of oak and chestnut glitter in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span> moonlight, sweeping
+aloft to the summit of the storied Saints’ Mountain. Just below our
+balcony the clustered spires and steep roofs of the huddled old town
+house their fifty thousand happy people between the wooded hillsides
+and the shimmering Neckar that bands the middle distance, on its
+placid Rhine journey, like a silver ribbon on a velvet cloak. In its
+bright waters hills and trees are luminously mirrored, along with the
+inky, motionless shadows of its bridges and the sober reflections of
+shuttered house-fronts along its verge.</p>
+
+<p>In the dewy coolness and still of evening the guardian oaks breathe a
+recurrent lullaby—now softly agitated, now as hushed and ghostly and
+motionless as the hills in which they are rooted; and one understands
+how such a soothing environment could have softened even the impetuous,
+fiery, war-loving young Körner to indite so gentle a benediction as his
+beautiful “Good Night”:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent6">“Good night!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To each weary, toilworn wight,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Now the day so sweetly closes,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Every aching brow reposes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Peacefully till morning light.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">Good night.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent6">“Home to rest!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Close the eye and calm the breast;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Stillness through the streets is stealing,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And the watchman’s horn is pealing,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And the Night calls softly ‘Haste!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">Home to rest!’”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span></p>
+<p>Up in the castle ruins one is seldom alone before midnight, and not
+even then if the melancholy spectre of Rupert’s Tower is disposed
+to walk abroad. In the early evening the good people of Heidelberg,
+kindliest and most contented of Germans, stroll with vast delight under
+the lindens of the castle gardens, and groups of careless students
+loiter merrily along the terraces, adding bright touches of color with
+their peaked caps and broad corps ribbons. Bits of song and bursts of
+laughter give a homely suggestion of habitation to these staring walls;
+one could fancy the dead-and-gone old nobles at wassail again, with
+minstrels in the banquet hall, and Perkeo, the jester, whispering jokes
+in the ear of the Count Palatine.</p>
+
+<p>“Under the tree-tops,” sang Goethe, “is quiet now.” There is a low
+sad sound of night breeze in the ivy; a swallow darts through a
+paneless window; a bat zig-zags among the echoing arches of a tower.
+Like phantom sentinels the stone statues of the old electors stand
+white and impressive in niches on the palace fronts. Fragrance of
+flowers drifts in from the castle gardens and the delicate plash of
+falling water comes from a terrace fountain. The lamps of the city
+rim the river below, and villas beyond the farther bank are marked
+by tiny dots of lights in the purple of the groves behind Neuenheim.
+Across the Neckar-cut gulf of shadow the chestnut-crowned summit of
+the Heiligenberg stares down solemnly at us, and not all the songs of
+its blithest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span> nightingales can banish thoughts of its ancient Roman
+sacrifices nor divert the credulous from vigils over the blue grave
+lights around the Benedictine cloister where they buried the sainted
+Abbot of Hirschau. Up through the dark billows of this tree-top ocean
+rises a strain of Wagner’s music from some cheery, hidden woodland
+inn—and under the magic spell of the night one could fancy the
+golden-haired Siegfried approaching on a new Rhine Journey, following
+the winding Neckar up the broad Rhenish plain; the Tarnhelm is at his
+belt, the World-Warder Ring on his finger, and the moonlight flashes
+dreadfully from the glittering blade of “Nothung” as the hero’s horn
+winds note of arrival under the walls of our stout castle!</p>
+
+<p>It is especially at such an hour as this that one realizes how easy
+it is for the man who thoroughly knows Heidelberg to acknowledge a
+delightful and lifelong bondage. A large number of the most eminent
+literati of the world have agreed in this. Goethe ascribed to her
+“ideal beauty.” Macaulay pronounced her environment “one of the fairest
+regions of Europe.” The father of German poetry, Martin Opitz, loved
+her dearly in his student days here, three centuries ago, and wrote
+affectionately of her all the rest of his life. The prolific Tieck
+found time between novels to lament the destruction of a few of her
+oaks. Alois Schreiber turned from his poetry and history to grieve
+over the loss of a lime-tree. Von Scheffel praised her in prose and
+verse and hailed her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span> in seven songs of his “Gaudeamus.” La Fontaine
+could not conceive of more ideal surroundings in which to reunite his
+“Clara du Plessis” and her devoted “Clairant.” G. P. R. James, in his
+favorite romance “Heidelberg,” wrought prodigies of sentimentality here
+with the heroic “Algernon Grey” and the emotional “Agnes.” Matthisson
+immortalized himself by his “Elegie” in these ruins. All who have read
+Alexandre Dumas’s dramatic “Crimes Célèbres” will recall the young
+fanatic, Karl Ludwig Sand, and his assassination of the poet, Kotzebue,
+in our neighboring city of Mannheim, but they may not have heard of
+how Kotzebue once said: “If an unhappy individual were to ask me what
+spot to live in to get rid of the cares and sorrows which pursue him,
+I should say Heidelberg; and a happy one asks me what spot he would
+choose to adorn with fresh wreaths the joys of his life, I should still
+say Heidelberg.”</p>
+
+<p>Goethe loved the Neckar, and scarcely less its famous old bridge. In
+an interpretative mood he once observed, “The bridge shows itself
+in such beauty as is perhaps not to be equaled by any other in the
+world.” And, indeed, it is an easy thing to divide enthusiasm between
+bridge and river. Nothing is jollier than loafing against the broad
+balustrades of this solid old veteran, as the students love to do, and
+lazily take note of the river’s tinted reflections, the ripple and eddy
+about the piers, the mirroring of the arches in perfect reverse, and
+watch the deep green shadows of the hills creep out and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span> steal across.
+Great rafts come downstream laden with the output of the Odenwald and
+Black Forest, and swift steamers hurry under the massive arches bound
+upstream for the mountain towns or downward to Mannheim. Ferries ply
+beside it, fishermen drift beneath it, and throngs of townspeople
+and countrymen stroll along it, with now and then a be-petticoated
+peasant girl from the Odenwald whose fair hair is hidden under a huge
+black coif. How redolent it is of Rhenish life! One lingers beside
+the great statue of its builder, the old Elector, and gazes with
+unwearying satisfaction on the strange mediæval gateway, loopholed and
+portcullised, and wonders where two other such queer round towers can
+be found with such odd bell-shaped capitals and such slender little
+spires. Terrible and tragic experiences have befallen this sturdy old
+hero, and its antique towers are pitted from the riddling of French
+and Swedish and German bullets. Fire has swept it, cannon shaken it,
+floods grappled with it, and blood drenched it from shore to shore.
+Wan processions of famine-stricken people have dragged themselves
+across its paving-stones, and its gateways have reëchoed with groans
+and prayers and curses. To-night we see it as defiant as ever,
+battle-scarred and unshaken, with “head bloody but unbowed,” striding
+its river with broad and shapely arches—as real a part of Heidelberg
+as the very hills above it.</p>
+
+<p>One looks down from the castle on the twinkling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span> lights of the cramped
+old town, and notes how it has ambitiously spread its suburbs even
+beyond the opposite bank and that its villa-lamps sprinkle their way
+in the distance toward that little hamlet with the great mouthful of
+a name,—Handschuhsheim,—in the hills. It is there, could we see it,
+that the tumbledown hut stands that sheltered Luther when he escaped
+from the “Tile-Devils” of Worms; at a sight of it one wonders if he did
+not exclaim here as he did at the Diet: “Here I take my stand. I can do
+no otherwise. <em>God help me!</em>” In Heidelberg itself, the shops of
+that one long street, Hauptstrasse, send up a wavering, crooked path
+of softened light, but the more elegant <em>Anlage</em> is discreetly
+reserved with all its hotels and imposing homes. One distinguishes
+little at this hour of the peaked tile roofs and faded shutters of the
+venerable town—the little awninged shops, sombre cafés, <em>Stuben</em>,
+and restaurants; or the excited appearance of an occasional side street
+that starts with all enthusiasm at the river, loses heart in a block or
+two, and comes suddenly to a discouraged end in a tangle of trees and
+forest paths. We only know that Emperor William <abbr title="the first">I</abbr> canters his bronze
+steed with its capacious girth along the middle of Ludwigs-Platz right
+up to the university building where the celebrated professors have
+their “readings” before their frisky young “Meine Herren”; and that
+the market-place is probably as shabby and gloomy as usual, and the
+Kornmarkt subsided again to its customary listlessness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span> since the last
+of the evening crowds have taken the mountain railroads there for cool
+trips to the Königsstuhl or the Molkenkur or for a trout dinner at the
+distant Wolfsbrunnen.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this cramped nest of roofs the shadowy Gothic tower of St.
+Peter’s Church rises boldly, challenging beholders to forget—if
+they can—how Jerome of Prague once nailed his theses on its doors
+and defended them before excited multitudes; calling, besides, on
+the distant and indifferent to sometimes have a thought of the
+famous university scholars who lie under the weeping-willows of
+its churchyard. A neighboring bidder for consideration, the famous
+Heilig-Geistkirche, thrusts a lofty spire skyward above the dark
+tree-tops until its weather vane is almost on a level with our feet.
+There is little need for this ecclesiastic to feel any apprehension
+on the score of being forgotten, so renowned has it been for half
+a thousand years as once the foremost cathedral of the Palatinate,
+celebrated for richness of endowment, extent of revenues, the beauty of
+its art treasures, and the learning of its prebendaries. As it appeals
+to us to-night it is as one fallen far from its former high estate,
+and yet the very eagles that soar over Heidelberg must have enough
+knowledge of religious controversy to recall its past amusing dilemmas
+of divided orthodoxy. The stranger in the castle ruins will smile
+as he thinks of what he has read of the days when both Protestants
+and Catholics worshiped there at one and the same<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span> time, through the
+effective device of a partition wall thrown up to separate choir from
+nave. The elaborate Catholic ceremonials of the altar necessitated the
+reservation of the choir for them, while the Protestants got along
+very nicely with a pulpit built in the end of the nave. What unusual
+entertainment might have been contrived by neutrals to the controversy
+had a brick or two been removed from the partition wall and an ear
+applied alternately to either service! On one side, <em>Ave Marias</em>
+and <em>Pater Nosters</em>—on the other, hymns of the Lutherans; here,
+the wailing <em>Confiteor</em> and the penitential breast-beating of
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">mea culpa</i>—there, grim scorn of all ritual and ceremony; in
+the choir, the intoning of versicle and response, reiterations of
+“<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Dominus Vobiscum</i>” and “<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Et cum Spiritu tuo</i>,” the solemn
+<em>Tantum Ergo</em>, the passionate <em>Agnus Dei</em>, and the triple
+sound of the acolyte’s bell as the Host is elevated above the kneeling,
+praying throngs—in the nave, a rapt absorption in the new significance
+of old truths, and lengthy discourses by stern and ascetic expounders;
+for one congregation, a glittering altar, sacred images, flaming
+candles, and a jeweled monstrance—stiff pews and a painted pulpit, for
+the other; for the Catholics, flocks of priests and choir boys, deacons
+and subdeacons, sumptuously vested in alb and stole and gorgeous
+chasuble—for the Protestants, one solemn man in black. Neutrals at
+the dividing wall could have rendered both congregations a service by
+loosening a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span> brick or two and letting a little incense and beauty pass
+to the Dissenters’ side, and some word of wisdom concerning a release
+from dogma get through to the Catholics. Had America’s new policy of
+church unity existed then, it would have advocated doing away with the
+wall altogether and finding some compromise for approaching a common
+God in a common way. Time, the great umpire, has settled the contest as
+a draw; for the partition wall has come out and the rival camps with
+it: the present occupants are “Old Catholics”—a sect with which either
+side has little sympathy and less patience.</p>
+
+<p>The evening lounger in the old castle will doubtless have more than one
+thought of the famous seat of learning that has, for five and a quarter
+centuries, invested the name of Heidelberg with so much lustre and
+glory. He will, of course, have heard it called the “cradle of Germanic
+science,” and will have been told that of all Germanic universities
+only those at Prague and Vienna are older than this. He can form some
+conclusion as to its rich contributions to human knowledge by merely
+recalling the names of its famous scholars,—Reuchlin, Melanchthon,
+Ursinus, Voss, Helmholtz, Bunsen, Kuno Fischer, and the rest,—and
+will gauge its present standing by the acknowledged eminence of
+its faculties in medicine, law, and philosophy. One thinks of its
+long eras of philosophic speculation, always deeply earnest if not
+invariably profitable, and applauds the force of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span> Longfellow’s simile
+in “Hyperion” when he compared them to roads in our Western forests
+that are broad and pleasant at first, but eventually dwindle to a
+squirrel-track and run up a tree. If the loiterer be a Presbyterian,
+he will want to acknowledge indebtedness to old Ursinus for that
+celebrated “Heidelberg Catechism” of three hundred and fifty years
+ago that supplied the Westminster Assembly with a model for the
+“Shorter Catechism” in use to-day. That the university has survived the
+destructive rigors of so many fierce wars is perhaps sufficient proof
+of its vitality and the estimate men have set on its usefulness. Tilly
+carried off its library and presented it to the Pope, when he conquered
+Heidelberg in the Thirty Years’ War, but although only a small portion
+of it has ever been returned it has to-day a half-million volumes and
+documents, among which are original writings of Martin Luther and
+manuscripts of the Minnesingers. The pleasant summer semester attracts
+students here,—being allowed, under the “Freiheit” system, to exchange
+<em>alma maters</em>,—and then one may count up perhaps two thousand
+scholastic transients in Heidelberg. To many visitors the equipment
+will appear meagre, for, excepting the main building in Ludwigs-Platz,
+the library building, medical institution, and botanical gardens,
+there is little in sight to remind one of its existence. In witness of
+which there is the popular joke about a new arrival who inquired of a
+passer-by where the university<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span> might be: “Don’t know,” was the reply:
+“I’m a student myself.”</p>
+
+<p>The presence of the jovial student, however, is too much in evidence at
+this time of the evening, through distant shouts and songs, to leave
+any one in doubt about the university being somewhere hereabouts. But
+when are they <em>not</em> in evidence? At any hour of the day and night
+you come across them in the cafés, on the streets, loafing on the
+bridge or up in the castle, or returning or departing on their favorite
+recreation of walking-trips through the hills. Their smart peaked
+caps and broad corps ribbons are scenic features of the neighborhood.
+You wonder when they study, and how much time they ever spend in
+the private rooms they call their <em>Wohnungen</em>. In spite of the
+appearance of extreme <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">hauteur</i> conveyed by their invariable and
+ceremonious punctilio these ruddy-faced boys are highly sociable, and
+take a prodigious delight in smoking, drinking, and singing together.
+A <em>Kaffeeconcert</em> is entirely to their liking, and even more a
+jolly <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Kegelbahn</i> supper in some forest restaurant at the end
+of a long tramp. Most of all, which is amazing, they relish their
+stupid <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Kneipen</i> where every friendly draft of their weak beer
+is preceded by a challenge to drink, and where the only redeeming
+feature is the fine singing. Still, at <em>Commerces</em>, one hears
+the time-honored Fox Chorus, “What comes there from the hill.” Even
+the pet vice of dueling might be mildly defended on the ground that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>
+German students have no such athletic contests as their brothers of
+America and England and that each looks to the sword, in consequence,
+as an arbiter of courage and prowess—from the <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Füchse</i> (who are
+freshmen) to the <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Bürschen</i> (who are seniors). Granted that the
+occasional sabre duel is really dangerous, still injuries are trifling
+in the ordinary encounters <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Auf der Mensur</i>, fought with the thin,
+basket-hilted Schläger, and preferably on the <i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Paukboden</i> of the
+famous Hirschgasse tavern up the little valley across the river. Blood
+apart, it is rather amusing than otherwise to watch the contestants in
+their pads and goggles, the seconds straddling between them with drawn
+words, and the callous umpire keeping merry count of the wounds. Few
+topers and bullies here, but vigorous, wholesome youth.</p>
+
+<p>The outlook from the Grand Balcony is upon a sea of foliage so vast
+as completely to surround castle, gardens, and terraces and convert
+them into just such an enchanted island as springs so naturally out
+of the pages of the “Arabian Nights.” Evidences of sorcery and magic
+multiply as we make the rounds of our fortress, for voices and music
+come up out of the tremulous green depths, and companion isles emerge
+in the moonlit distance, but lifted far above us and set on prodigious
+wave-shoulders of steadily increasing height. The loftiest of these
+rocks we know to be famous Königsstuhl, a name they have vainly been
+trying to change to Kaisersstuhl since the visit of Emperor Francis
+of Austria, a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span> hundred years ago, and Emperor Alexander of Russia.
+From this eyrie perch one looks abroad by day on a very considerable
+portion of the wide, wide world, and the distance covered is only
+limited by the imagination of the observer. Then the Neckar valley is
+at one’s feet, and a little farther off is the Rhine, and away yonder
+are the Haardt Mountains and the sombre edges of the Black Forest. The
+faint blur on the southwestern horizon is said to be Speyer, where the
+followers of the Reformation were first called “Protestants,” and the
+lofty pinnacle of the cathedral, rising above the tombs of its imperial
+dead, quickens thoughts of that “mellifluous doctor” whose writings
+were “a river of Paradise,” the crusade preacher, St. Bernard, to whom
+the Madonna is credited with having revealed herself in that very
+church. Our mortal eyes may confirm the identity of this much from the
+Königsstuhl’s observation tower, but we can only envy the miraculous
+vision of those who see the spire of the Strassburg Cathedral, sixty
+miles away. Doubtless they could distinguish the identical tree of the
+famous Odenwald rhyme:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“There stands a tree in the Odenwald,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">With many a bough so green,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">’Neath which my own true love and I</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">A thousand joys have seen.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Another of the companion isles of this moonlit, tree-top ocean is
+the popular Molkenkur, a modern “whey-cure,” that flourishes on the
+princely site of the earliest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span> stronghold of this whole region. To
+those who are strolling its broad terrace and reflecting, perhaps,
+upon the tragic history of the place, seven centuries roll back and
+Barbarossa’s brother, the savage Conrad of Hohenstaufen, climbs the
+forest trail with archers and spearmen, returning to his mountain
+retreat from a robber raid along the Rhine. And perhaps the visitor
+fancies he even hears the roar of that historic explosion that rained
+the wreckage of old Conrad’s fortress on town and river, or sees the
+blinding lightning stroke that crumbled this dread stronghold into a
+stalking-ground for the shuddering phantoms of winter fireside legends.</p>
+
+<p>Reflections that penetrate still farther back into the gloaming of
+local tradition will precede Conrad’s fortress with the temple of
+the enchantress Jetta; and could we distinguish in the distance the
+rock where the cozy inn of the Wolfsbrunnen perches and serves its
+rare dinners of mountain trout, we should see the very spot where the
+wolf slew Jetta in judgment of the Goddess Hertha, who was properly
+indignant that her priestess should have fallen in love with a mortal.</p>
+
+<p>The nearer waters of the billowy forest-sea that ripples around the
+ruined castle walls contain in their dark, cool depths a picturesque
+tangle of woodland paths and romantic walks, thickets of fragrant
+flowers, a shattered arch half cloaked with ivy, and many a pleasant
+wayside café opened to the sky and gay with its little German band.
+For those who emerge from the shadows and come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span> up like Undines into
+the moonlight that streams in a silver mist on terrace and garden, as
+fair a picture reveals itself as can be seen in any part of our world.
+Here are lakes and grottoes and fountains and statues, all flecked with
+the heavy shadows of lindens and beeches. Here are crumbling towers
+and vine-mantled turrets and shattered, moss-grown arch and cornice.
+Even lovelier to-day are these gardens and scarcely less celebrated
+than three hundred years ago when old Solomon de Caus, architect and
+engineer of the Counts Palatine and first prophet of the power of
+steam, “leveled the mountain-tops and filled up the valleys” (as he
+has recorded in a Latin inscription in one of the older grottoes),
+and built these “plantations” and made them the haunts of singing
+birds, and filled them with orange-trees and rare exotic plants, and
+ornamented them with statues and with fountains that made music as they
+played. The ruined castle is embraced and enfolded in these beautiful
+gardens as an ailing child by its mother’s arms. The ravages of fire
+and war have scarred and wrecked it beyond man’s redemption, but the
+sturdy walls still oppose their twenty-foot masonry to the attacks of
+Time as stubbornly as did the great Wrent Tower when it defied the
+powder blasts of the detested Count Mélac and his devastating Frenchmen.</p>
+
+<p>As the hour of ten draws near, we return through the vaulted passage
+from the Great Balcony and enter the grass-grown central courtyard.
+Outside the façades<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span> were grim and bleak and built to meet an enemy’s
+blows, but toward the courtyard the castle turned faces of ornament
+and beauty. One feels at once the force of the saying that this is not
+the ruin of a castle, but of an epoch. It slowly flowered through the
+five hundred years that Heidelberg was the capital of the Palatinate,
+and all the development of those intervening times is expressed in its
+varying architecture. Pomp and circumstance are written big across
+it, for its masters and builders were counts and princes, kings and
+emperors. One feels the love and pride they took in these deserted
+palaces, now masterless. In the pale moonlight whole rows of effigies
+of the illustrious dead stand boldly forth in niches of the hollow,
+staring walls, and medallion heads peer curiously out of pediment
+recesses, and history and allegory find expression in lifelike statue
+and carven bust. Delicate arabesques and fanciful conceits wreathe
+themselves in stones of portal and cornice, and the armorial chequers
+of Bavaria and the Lion of the Palatinate oppose the lordly Eagle of
+the Empire. Time has modulated the discordant keys of architecture of
+divergent periods into a common and mellow harmony, so that the first
+rude stones laid by old Rudolph seem a consistent part of an assemblage
+that includes that finest example of Renaissance architecture in all
+Germany—Otto-Heinrich’s wonderful ruddy palace set with its yellow
+statues. One thinks of Prague and the battle of the White Hill as he
+sees the ill-starred<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span> Frederick’s massive contribution, and wonders
+why this beautiful realm could not have enticed him from playing that
+tragic rôle of “Winter King.” Frederick’s palace looms impressively by
+night; in its varied architecture and majestic effigies of the House
+of Wittelsbach one feels the propriety of having here a comprehensive
+levy upon the building-knowledge of all previous time as an adequate
+and appropriate expression of the catholic culture of the lords of the
+Palatinate.</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, one reflects, there was need for both strength and beauty
+to a fortress that was to play so momentous a rôle in the fierce
+dissensions of its time. In that dungeon a pope once lay a prisoner; in
+this chamber Huss found refuge; in yonder chapel Luther has preached,
+and all the foremost spiritual lords of the hour. This courtyard has
+echoed with shouts for the Emperor Sigismund when he tarried here <em>en
+route</em> to play that perfidious part at the Council of Constance,
+and has rocked with wild applause as “Wicked Fritz,” returning in
+triumph from the battlefield of Seckenheim, marched in his captive
+princes. These staring walls have blazed with royal fêtes—in the hush
+and desolation of to-night one feels a deep sadness in contrasting the
+ominous silence that pervades them now with the splendor and uproar
+that vitalized them when a princess was wedded in this crumbling
+chapel; when Emperor Maximilian came up from his coronation at
+Frankfort; when the foremost figure of his era, Emperor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span> Charles <abbr title="the fifth">V</abbr>, and
+his sallow little son who was later Phillip <abbr title="the second">II</abbr>, feasted and reveled
+here for days at a time.</p>
+
+<p>We look up at the Gothic balconies, and it seems as though we could
+almost see some early lord of this stronghold peering down through
+painted windows at the athletic sports of his hardy sons; and a certain
+unreality takes phantom form and substance, and the sentinel figures
+descend solemnly from their niches as a train of valorous knights
+and pages issues from Otto-Heinrich’s broad portal with music and
+laughter; there is the scrape and tread of mailed feet and the shouts
+of a gallant company as fair-haired women in shimmering silks and
+high-peaked headdresses award prizes of the tourney to kneeling men
+in glittering armor; and the trumpets sound and the torches flare and
+the noble retinue sweeps into the great banquet hall, while the “merry
+councilor” who brings up the rear makes us a profound and mocking
+bow as the door is closed—and we are alone with the statues in the
+moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>The empty, silent courtyard is spectral and sad; it is an hour for
+reverie, for apprehension. The pale silver of the moon whitens into
+phantom-life two sides and a corner; the rest is a deep, hushed shadow.
+A cushion of ivy stirs in the faint night air; a bat flashes over a
+shattered cornice; a stone detaches itself exhaustedly and falls with a
+tinkle of sand, waking a protest of little echoes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span></p>
+
+<p>One steals away silently, resigning ward of all this senile decay to
+faithful Perkeo, who, in wooden effigy, still companions his huge empty
+tuns in the darkness of the cellars—the little, red-haired, faithful
+jester who alone remains constant to his master, of all the army of
+attendants that thronged these palaces for half a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>We pass the old stone-canopied well whose columns once were
+Charlemagne’s, pass the ponderous clock tower and the moat bridge, and
+enter the fragrant gardens as the valley bells sound ten and the purple
+mists are rising from the Neckar.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to escape a feeling of profound melancholy. Where now
+are the powerful princes whose rusted swords may not strike back were I
+to raise a hand of destruction against the halls they reared and loved
+and guarded with such might? “The fate of every man,” said the Koran,
+“have We bound about his neck.”</p>
+
+<p>It is depressing to think that such glory, power, and beauty as once
+were here should have flourished so wonderfully and come to so little.
+Was all this magnificence created merely for destruction? Could nothing
+less suffice grim Time to build him an eyrie for bats and swallows?
+Was Von Matthisson right in the judgment he expressed in the sad and
+sympathetic “Elegie” he penned in these ruins, and must we conclude
+with him that temporal glory is but ashes and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span> that the darkness of
+the grave adorns impartially the proud brow of the world ruler and the
+trembling head that shakes above the pilgrim’s staff?</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Hoheit, Ehre, Macht und Ruhm sind eitel!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Eines weltgebieters stolze Scheitel</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Und ein zitternd Haupt am Pilgerstab</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Deckt mit einer Dunkelheit das Grab!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_309">
+<img src="images/i_309.jpg" alt="" width="435" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTERLAKEN">INTERLAKEN</h2>
+
+<p class="center">10 P.M. TO 11 P.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>THE top of the evening at brisk and bracing Interlaken is certainly ten
+o’clock. Vigorous, vitalizing air breathes down on the lush meadows
+from towering Alpine snowfields, and languor and ennui fall away from
+her dispirited summer idlers and a refreshing life interest reasserts
+itself. It is then one may see the deep, flowered lawns that front the
+great hotels of the broad Höheweg pleasantly thronged with animated
+guests, modishly and immaculately groomed; and each little street and
+quiet lane has its quota of vivacious strollers who prefer the keen
+night air and the inspiring mountain-prospect to the conventional
+attractions of the brilliant Kursaal or the round of mild social
+diversions that is in progress in the hotel apartments. Then, too,
+there is a certain subdued note of expectancy in the air, for this is
+the little village’s fête hour; and almost as the valley clocks are
+striking the hour the celebration is heralded with a burst of rockets
+from the open field of the Höhenmatte, in the centre of the town, and
+there is a general rush of chattering guests to see the display and to
+exhibit prodigious approval. All are aware of the fact that this is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>
+merely an expression, in terms of Swiss thrift, of the appreciation
+the seventy-five hundred villagers feel for the lucrative presence of
+thousands of guests, and yet it admirably serves as a mid-break in the
+evening’s diversions. There is little enough to the celebration, to be
+sure, excepting the exaggerated importance such an event always assumes
+to isolated summer people, but you would think it was a pyrotechnic
+marvel, to judge by the enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>To see Interlaken then is to behold her at her gayest. Bridge-parties
+forsake their cards, late diners their ices, and billiardists their
+cues. Each little balcony on the hotel fronts is promptly crowded,
+orchestras strike up lively Strauss waltzes, troops of delighted guests
+hurry across the Höheweg and pour into the meadow, until one might
+fairly conclude there was a carnival on, from the overflow of laughter
+and merrymaking. It is always a great moment at the Kursaal. There the
+excitement seekers have been wandering from parlors to lounging-rooms
+and ending up in the cheery gaming-hall, where a toy train on a long
+green table darts around a little track, laden with the francs and
+merry hopes of modest challengers of fortune, and comes to an exciting
+and leisurely stop before some station with the name of a European
+capital. Just then, like as not, as the <em>croupier</em> begins raking
+in the scattered piles of silver and the losers are being gleefully
+accosted by their friends, somebody suddenly shouts “Fireworks!” and
+forthwith<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span> all run hurrahing into the gardens and cry out like summer
+children in vast delight over the rockets that go hurtling skyward
+from the Höhenmatte. It is all quite of the nature of a very elegant
+international fête to which the Old World and the New have accredited
+their most <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">recherché</i> representatives.</p>
+
+<p>There is seldom a lack of keen activity at Interlaken, but at this
+hour it is most abounding; nor will the new arrival fail to note the
+contrast between the sharp alertness of this company and the lethargic
+listlessness that depresses, for instance, the bored idlers who bask
+in the dusty olive gardens of the Riviera. In the intermittent glow
+of the fireworks, cottages and distant hotels spring out of the
+surrounding darkness. The top of a hillside sanatorium appears of
+a sudden white against the dark pines, the packsaddle roof of the
+church tower discovers itself, a turret shows with the red field and
+white Greek cross of the Swiss flag lazily unfolding above it, and
+one looks anxiously for just one glimpse of the old cloister’s round
+towers and cone-shaped roofs that reminded Longfellow of “tall tapers
+with extinguishers.” Music drifts down from remote cafés and pavilions
+nestling in wooded nooks. The air is heady and buoyant with the scent
+of pine and fir. Life seems at high tide; and then just as suddenly it
+is all over, and the gay company resumes its interrupted activities
+with infinite laughter and handclapping.</p>
+
+<p>There is a positive spell to all this Alpine comedy.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span> No new arrival
+will feel inclined to return at once to hotel conventionalities, with
+a soft purple mist shrouding the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and the distant
+Jungfrau lying pallid and wan in the moonlight. He will gaze about him
+in wonder at the snow-crowned peaks that hem in the little Bödeli plain
+where Interlaken snuggles, and will feel how wonderful it is that the
+boisterous Lütschine and its fellow torrents could ever have filled in
+this alluvial barrier between the deep lakes that fought them inch by
+inch. He will think of the enchanted regions of the Bernese Oberland
+that lie just before him, and of the contrasting beauty of the inland
+seas that stretch away on either hand: Lake Brienz, mysterious and
+austere, scowling at its precipitous mountain shores, roaring welcomes
+to its thundering waterfalls, and begrudging standing-room for the
+tiniest of hamlets; Lake Thun, “the Riviera of Switzerland,” with
+lovely vistas of green meadows, châteaux-dotted hillsides and distant
+snowy summits, all breathing such mildness and serenity as befitted
+the former abode of the holy hermit of St. Beatenberg. And doubtless
+he will seek out some tree-embowered path that winds along the Aare,
+and there indulge in contemplative thought of this glittering blue link
+between the lakes. Nor could he do better, for this arrogant stream is
+an illustrious instance of a reformed rake. Of evil repute for riotous
+cascade and brawling torrent all the way up to its home by the Grimsel
+Pass, it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span> responds to the touch of civilization at Interlaken and
+meekly accepts the bondage of steam for the remainder of its career.
+What a gratifying example of reform it presents as it proceeds demurely
+along from this scene of moral crisis, laving thankful little towns,
+reporting conscientiously to the proper authorities at Bern, and, after
+an exhibition review-sweep around the capital, flowing sweetly on to
+Waldshut and modestly laying down its burden on the broad bosom of the
+Rhine. The stranger will perceive that virtue has its rewards, with
+rivers as with humans, when he takes note of the extravagant petting
+and eulogy that has followed the repentance of the Aare at Interlaken,
+its adornment with promenades, gardens, and artistic bridges, and the
+choice of much excellent society, particularly at night, on the part of
+ruminating savants and romantic lovers of all ages.</p>
+
+<p>Strolling along the river paths carpeted with sweet-scented pine
+needles, the delighted new arrival has only to lift his eyes to
+discover how picturesquely the little city lies in its bed of lush
+and fertile meadows. It will seem to him like a great stage set for a
+mammoth spectacle. For background there is the black and flinty Harder,
+set with the grim rock face of the scowling Hardermannli, rugged in
+boulders and sheer cliffs and hiding its base in treacherous, grassy
+slopes; the Aare skirts it fearfully, and the pretty little cottages
+of Unterseen shrink close to Lake Thun on its farther side.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span> Prostrate
+Interlaken lies supine before it, gazing appealingly through its
+innumerable windows across the open Höhenmatte, over the beeches and
+firs of the protruding shoulder of the Rugen, and on up the dodging,
+narrow Lütschine Valley to the remote and sympathetic Jungfrau. The
+scene is ready for the curtain when you have dotted the mountain slopes
+with châlets.</p>
+
+<p>Or perhaps, if the stranger is fanciful, he will conceive the
+Alpine ravens thinking it some enormous eagle swooping toward the
+Lauterbrunnen Valley, with clustered houses for an attenuated body and
+two lakes for powerful blue wings beating out and back. Or, again, he
+may be reminded by this group of huge hotels of some fleet of old-time
+ships-of-the-line that started down the valley to bombard the Jungfrau.
+Early in the action formation was lost and the great hulks drifted
+about in hopeless confusion. Several, apparently, went promptly aground
+on the banks of the Aare right under the precipices of the Harder; all
+of the big ones foundered in a row along the Höheweg; a number became
+desperately entangled in the square before the Spielmatten Island;
+some trailed southward in what we call Jungfraustrasse, and others
+in Alpenstrasse; here and there one lies at anchor along the farther
+meadows, waiting for signals from the flagship on the Höheweg; and at
+least one, in the guise of an ugly white church, was caught in some
+violent cross-current and tossed up high and dry on the brow of the
+fir-smothered Gsteig.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span></p>
+
+<p>The evening guest who does not fancy reveries along a mountain stream,
+nor yet the quiet pacing of the neat lanes that are so characteristic
+of this immaculate republic of “spotless towns,” whose very flag
+appropriately suggests the Red Cross Society’s familiar emblem of
+sanitation, will find it amusing to loiter among the little shops
+of the village and see the curious wooden trifles of Brienz, the
+delicately tinted majolica ware of Thun, exquisite ivory carvings,
+and rare <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bijouterie</i> of filigree silver wrought with infinite
+patience and skill. Tiring of these, he may ramble under the fine old
+walnut-trees of the Höheweg and congratulate himself that he is not
+under the horse-chestnuts of Lucerne to look out on inferior mountain
+prospects and breathe a less intoxicating air.</p>
+
+<p>The most approved form of evening entertainment is a round of calls
+among friends scattered over the broad lawns of the hotels, when
+one may divert himself with summer orchestras or itinerant bands of
+Italian singers in crimson sashes, or revel in a rare profusion of
+beautiful flowers; and, from time to time, look gladly up at a crisp
+sky splendid with great luminous stars whose tremulous ardor, in Walter
+Pater’s famous phrase, “burns like a gem.” It is a capital place to
+gather impressions of what life at Interlaken means and what goes
+forward each day among its votaries. It is perfectly plain that this
+must be a great place; everybody is so bubblingly cheerful and so
+devoutly grateful for being just here and no possible spot else. You
+will hear them insisting that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span> Interlaken, being halfway between, is
+an admirable combination of the complacent “prettiness” of Geneva and
+the austere solemnity of the vaunted Engadine Valley. Or there will
+be fragments of conversation reaching you about tennis matches on the
+Höhenmatte, lake bathing in Brienz, motor-bus runs from the golf links
+of Bönigen, where the residents plant a fruit tree whenever a baby is
+born, or of desperate scrambles up the zigzag trails of the Harder
+beloved of Weber, Mendelssohn, and Wagner, with rapturous accounts of
+the inspiring view from the <em>Kulm</em>. Some, you will gather, have
+passed the day uneventfully among the park walks of the Rugen, gazing
+down on Lake Brienz from the Trinkhalle Café, or on Lake Thun from the
+Scheffel Pavilion, or on both from farther up on the belvedere of the
+Heimwehfluh. Others again, it seems, have actually crossed the mild
+Wagner Ravine and ascended the lofty Abendberg of the Grosser Rugen;
+and for this pitiful adventure you hear them pose as veteran mountain
+conquerors who will carry their alpenstocks home with them and forever
+after speak familiarly of edelweiss and the flora of the summits.
+There even appear to have been romantic souls, familiar with Madame de
+Staël’s accounts of St. Berchtold festivals, who have spent the hours
+in dreams of Byron’s “Manfred” down by the old round tower of the
+dilapidated wreckage of Unspunnen Castle—in truth, the most abject
+of ruins, and quite as forlorn as Mariana’s Moated Grange. Not a few
+will have the courage to confess that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span> they have done nothing more
+heroic than stroll by the shaded Goldei promenades along the Aare until
+they came to Unterseen, where they deliberately sat down and gazed to
+satiety at the curious toy houses with the long carved balconies and
+amazing roofs that project beyond all belief.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_319">
+<img src="images/i_319.jpg" alt="" width="370" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">INTERLAKEN, ON THE HOTEL LAWN</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus, by merely catching flying ends of talk, a stranger may imbibe the
+proper amount of enthusiasm and gather some rambling notion of the fine
+things Interlaken has in store for him.</p>
+
+<p>But the real evening-heroes must be looked for at the Kursaal. That is
+where you hear the great champion talkers of the world! What was the
+amiable Tartarin to such as these? Or Baron Munchausen? Or Sir John
+Mandeville? On such deaf ears fell the warning ignored of “Excelsior”:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Beware the awful avalanche!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Behold them at their ease in wicker chairs in the lounging-room,
+stretching the weary limbs that have borne them in safety through a
+hundred Alpine perils. For all who will listen, what tales may be heard
+of desperate daring amid the imminent deadly breach of crevasse and
+avalanche! Under the vivid hand of the actual participant one fairly
+sees the progress of the proud mountain-queller—follows with bated
+breath the slow and tedious early stages, the hazardous upward advance,
+the surmounting of final barriers by dint of ice-axe and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span> life-rope,
+and so enters into the joy of the ultimate conquest of the wild, bleak,
+wind-swept summit. Who would have the hardihood in such a presence to
+speak a word of such contemptible contrivances as mountain tramways and
+funicular railroads! It is enough that the uninitiated should realize
+in the shuddering depths of his soul that there still remains <em>terra
+incognita</em> to the listless, the fat, and the asthmatic. Later on,
+of course, we come to view these hardy characters in a somewhat truer
+perspective; but that will be after we have talked with their guides,
+or ourselves turned heroes and bluffed at like hazards.</p>
+
+<p>All the same, there is no denying the satisfaction a newcomer has,
+in the beginning, in attending the impressive conversation of these
+desperate and intrepid Kursaal adventurers. He certainly feels that
+he has at last reached a region of hardy men and genuine mountain
+hand-to-hand struggles. He hears, with popping eyes, of the lofty
+little hamlet of Mürren, away up in cloudland, whose tiny cottages
+stagger under broad, stone-freighted roofs and where vast, sublime
+Titans scowl awfully from inaccessible heights. They tell him it is a
+region of eternal dazzling whiteness, with patches of black here and
+there that are really forests half buried in snow, and where the air is
+stifling with the constant odor of ice and frost. A truly shuddering
+place, they say, where men cannot hear themselves talk for the
+incessant thundering of plunging avalanches, and where the herdsman<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span>
+seldom ventures and the sunrise is never heralded by the alphorn of the
+hardy <em>Senn</em>. Later on, to be sure, we journey luxuriously to this
+same Mürren in a comfortable mountain railway and with considerably
+less of peril than attends going to office by elevator in a sky-scraper
+at home; and we find it a green and peaceful retreat, well supplied
+with hotels and gratefully affected by delicate old ladies with weak
+lungs. Just the same, we would not have missed the thrills of that
+first Kursaal account. Alas for all disillusionment, anyway! Most of
+the beautiful white, velvety edelweiss these rocking-chair climbers
+produce from their pockets in proof of their presence in frightful and
+remote ravines has really been bought for a franc on the Höheweg, and
+the chamois they stalked in summit passes generally dwindle down to the
+little ivory ones you find in the shops of Jungfraustrasse.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of the Kursaal, when you get it, is stranger than its
+fiction; as when the talk turns to the progress of the construction
+work on the Jungfrau Railway, that imperishable monument to the genius
+and patience of the late Adolf Guyer-Zeller, of Zurich. It is then
+you hear of the loftiest tunnels in the world, eight and ten miles
+long, through icy mountain shoulders ten thousand feet above the sea;
+of gradients of one in four; of squirrel locomotives so ingeniously
+contrived that if the electric power were suddenly to fail they could
+generate enough by their own weight to clap on brakes and come down
+in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span> safety; of searchlights in the stations on the peaks so strong
+that a man can read by them away over at Thun; of powerful telescopes,
+free to patrons, through which you may observe the occupations of the
+crowds on the Rigi and Mount Pilatus at remote Lucerne; of roomy and
+luxurious stations blasted out of the depths of the mountains, whose
+floors are parquetry and whose light and heat are electricity, with
+twenty-foot windows piercing the rock and appearing, even from across
+the neighboring abyss, like tiny pin-pricks in the perpendicular cliff;
+of the highest post-office on earth, from whose windows you look out
+on twenty glaciers. Of the truth of all this you are to learn later
+on when you make the unforgettable run to Eismeer—“sea of ice”—the
+farthest point so far attained in the steady progress of this marvelous
+railway toward the summit of the Jungfrau, now only a mile or two
+beyond, and which had been the despair of mountain climbers of all time
+until the Meyer brothers conquered it, one hundred years ago.</p>
+
+<p>One finds the evening gossipers of the Kursaal scarcely less
+fascinating when they focus their talents on nearer regions; for
+“distant meadows” are not always “the greenest.” Agreeable things are
+to be heard of Schynige Platte, whither, it appears, you journey by
+cogwheel railway up steep gradients in an observation car behind a
+violently puffing locomotive, past pretty toy stations, around dizzy
+corners, through the startling blackness of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span> unexpected tunnels, and
+so on out and up to the giddy plateau and an overpowering prospect
+of snowfields, misty valleys, gorges, and cataracts upon which
+you gaze in spellbound astonishment from the comfortable terrace
+of the “Alpenrose.” From no other viewpoint, they tell you, does
+the stupendous Mönch (Monk) seem to stand out so squarely in the
+middle distance in his cowl of snow, playing his traditional rôle of
+discouraging duenna between the coveted Jungfrau and the eager Eiger
+whom he repels with an eternal arm of glittering, blue ridge-ice.</p>
+
+<p>When the conversation takes up Grindelwald, it becomes so attractive
+that you make a mental note to go there the first thing in the morning.
+It seems you are to take one of those droll little coaches of the
+Bernese Oberland Road marked “B.O.B.,” and proceed delightedly up the
+green valley of the Lütschine. Very soon will loom before you the
+bleak shoulders of the Wetterhorn, seared and precipitous, capped and
+pocketed with snow; the overwhelming pyramid of the Eiger, fearful with
+gorge and chasm; the regal Jungfrau, immaculate and stupendous; and,
+most uncommon spectacle of all, the awe-inspiring glacier—a frozen
+tumble of scarred boulders and grimy icebergs, pierced by glittering
+ice grottoes and ridged with terraced ways from which you stare down
+into yawning black gulfs that are fringed with giant icicles pendent
+from the frozen ledges. What was it Coleridge said of glaciers?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But many there will be at the Kursaal to tell you such tales of the
+enchanted Lauterbrunnen Valley as to incline you to reconsider any
+resolution about going first to Grindelwald. There, it is clear, we
+are to find quality rather than quantity: a narrow ravine through the
+mountains, carpeted with the greenest of turf and hung with glorious
+waterfalls that come tumbling down from lofty limestone precipices.
+We are to drive beside a turbulent stream set with occasional châlets
+whose projecting roofs will suggest broad-brimmed hats jammed down
+over their eyes, and here and there we shall come across a white stone
+church. Shortly there will be raging, leaping torrents all about us,
+vaulting down great cliffs of strange and startling appearance, and
+a vista of wonderland will open before us with the stately Steinberg
+enthroned in the midst. Next, climax on climax, the incomparable
+Staubbach! Before this queen of cataracts every other “hanging thread”
+is instantly and hopelessly dwarfed, as it launches its “wreaths of
+dangling water-smoke” from a thousand feet above. We will think this
+“dust brook” a mere feathery spray fluttered in a capricious breeze,
+so astonishing is the evidence of the resistance of the air and the
+friction of the rocks back of it; but once we have gone behind it and
+observed the “perpetual iris” made by the sun in shining<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span> through, it
+will appear a wonder beyond classification. Byron fancied it “the tail
+of the White Horse”; Wordsworth called it “the sky-born waterfall”; and
+Goethe’s dripping song of it runs:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“In clouds of spray,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Like silver dust,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">It veils the rock</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In rainbow hues;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And dancing down</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">With music soft,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Is lost in air.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Lesser lights are to be found among the Kursaal heroes who will confess
+to nothing more unusual in the way of activity than salmon-fishing in
+the neighboring lakes or bagging red partridge and hazel hens in the
+upper meadows. But these, by contrast, appear sportsmen of so mean an
+order that the stranger who has fed fat on the succulent yarns of the
+Munchausens receives with impatience information for which, in fact, he
+should be grateful. For instance: that in the winter the thermometers
+of the higher settlements get down to fifty-four below freezing and
+yet the dry air keeps people warmer than in the valleys, and that the
+snow falls in such incredible quantities that artificial lights have
+to be used in the lower stories of the houses all day and trenches cut
+for exit; that up there when the terrific Föhn blows from the south
+no man can make headway against it, but must lie flat on his face and
+hang on and then jump up and dart forward a few yards between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span> gusts;
+that those people can foretell the weather by changes in the color of
+the ice—blue meaning fine, green for snow, and white for fog; that
+the Alpine crows of the summits are dark blue, with yellow beaks and
+red feet, and the “wall-creepers” are gray as mice, with white and
+red spots on their wings and with beaks shaped like awls. At some
+such point as this the stranger will rise with a yawn and go away
+in disgust, annoyed at being taken for a credulous fool. The seed,
+however, has been sown and it flourishes like the fabled mustard. The
+new arrival becomes a confirmed zealot and burns with all the ardor
+of a convert; albeit his brain is a confused and bewildered muddle of
+harsh-sounding mountain names, all, apparently, ending in <em>horn</em>.</p>
+
+<p>When he comes out on the lawns he finds the guests still thronging the
+verandas, although it is nearly eleven and prodigies of mountaineering
+are slated for the morrow, and he hears the bands still engaged with
+Puccini and the latest Vienna successes. In the fragrant, dewy gardens
+fountains are playing, and lovers are discreetly screening behind
+clumps of flowering shrubs. Returning excursionists are excitedly
+vocal over the illumination of the Giessbach, whence they have just
+arrived in one of those pompous lake steamers whose sure and cautious
+pace reminded the satirical Victor Tissot of “the dignified motion of
+a canalboat.” To hear these enthusiasts, this appears to have been
+one more of those exceptionable occasions that the absent are always
+missing,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span> and that the renowned waterfall never before roared and
+tumbled and foamed half so extravagantly in making its long, mad plunge
+through the dusky, dark-green firs. Out on the Höheweg a walking-party
+in knickerbockers and hobnailed shoes, and with edelweiss stuck in
+green felt hats, are flourishing their alpenstocks and driving bargains
+with sunburned guides whose names, undoubtedly, are either Melchior or
+Mathias; these latter, we are to learn, are of a fearless but canny and
+laconic nature, “economical as gypsies and punctual as executioners.”</p>
+
+<p>How keenly people take their pleasures in the sparkling evenings of
+Interlaken. How sharp and distinct are sounds and sights, and how
+varied the night life. Each little street is as gayly illuminated as
+though for some special celebration, and so hearty with good cheer that
+one looks for some band of Bernese wrestlers, returning in triumph
+from a festival, to round the next corner and strike up that clarion
+anthem “Stehe fest, O Vaterland.” It would seem as though the “Fête du
+Mi-Été” must actually be in full swing right here, instead of afar in
+the upland pastures. Even at this hour a joyful multitude still streams
+along under the Höheweg’s century-old walnuts, hatless, radiant, and
+babbling in every European tongue. They flock about the confectioners’
+stands and in and out of the curiosity-châlets, greeting acquaintances
+with eager pleasure and proposing jolly plans for to-morrow. Each
+little shop seems selling to capacity.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span> Occasionally a peasant girl
+passes, brusque and stolid, in short skirt and bright bodice, with
+V-shaped rows of edelweiss buttons. Out on the green Höhenmatte lively
+groups loiter about aimlessly, and somewhere in the vague distance
+some one is singing the ever-popular “Trittst im Morgenrot daher.” The
+thickly-wooded Rugen seems a colossal black mastiff asleep with his
+head between his paws. Away up the misty valley, whose vital air is so
+sweet with refreshing odors and so soothing with soft music, the regal
+Jungfrau looms in dim and spectral outline, as ghostly and deceptive as
+any faint feathering of cumulus clouds.</p>
+
+<p>A distant <em>Jödel</em> or the lilt of a plaintive <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ranz des
+Vaches</i> excites cordial thoughts of this fair Helvetia and her
+strong and devoted people. “I wonder,” a friend once said to me at
+Interlaken, “if these men and women really appreciate how lovely
+their country is.” Perhaps the best answer is to be found in the
+desperate resolution with which they have held it for six hundred
+years. Hard necessity has taught these brawny mountaineers, whom Mr.
+Ruskin ungenerously called “ungenerous and unchivalrous,” that to be
+“painfully economical” is wiser than to chance privation. One thinks
+with wonder of the hardships endured by the herdsman away up in the
+mountain pastures, eating his sweet-bread and draining his milk-filled
+wooden bowl in a rude pine hut, with goats and kine for comrades, and,
+for his sole diversion, an occasional glimpse of a leaping chamois, a
+sly mountain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span> fox, a white hare, or the whistling, rat-like, shadowy
+marmot. With his long alphorn he calls the cattle home or sounds the
+vesper hour, until the loud echoes shout back from snowfield and ice
+gorge and the great ravens swerve in their swimming flight. In summer,
+fluttering clouds of butterflies will drift above the pansies and
+Alpine roses and gentians on his meadow; but in winter the pallid,
+velvety edelweiss is all the huntsman will find on those frozen ledges.
+What a wild and tragic region it must be when the last <em>Senn</em> has
+driven his herd down into the valleys and old Winter is in undisturbed
+possession of his “dear domestic cave.” The herdsman may rejoice that
+he is not there then; for it becomes a world of black and white, of
+illimitable snow and blotches of black forests, of death and waste and
+the frightful stillness of stupendous heights. Then it is a deserted
+realm of ice and snow set with pitfalls of treacherous crevasses and
+dreadful perils from hidden gulfs and pitiless avalanches; a shuddering
+space of cloud banks and waving vapor-scarfs; a haunted borderland of
+sinister shapes in the writhing mists like wraiths of Alpine legends.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, hundreds of failing foreigners go a long way up in those
+forbidding regions in winter for an “enthusiasm of the blood” and a
+“fairy titillation of the nerves.” And when the days are bright and of
+their peculiar crystal clearness, and the skies are a cloudless blue
+and the sunshine a deluge, these invalids revel in skating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span> and curling
+and the hockey they call “bandy”; and will even try appalling flights
+by ski and toboggan through the “nipping and eager air,” over smooth
+trails of glistening snow, rivaling the records of the “blue-ribbon”
+Schatzalp course at Davos, where they do the two-mile run in something
+under four minutes. There is a chance observation in “Silas Marner”
+that “youth is not exclusively the period of folly!”</p>
+
+<p>Of a summer evening, however, it might not be altogether unpleasant in
+some parts of that cloudland. Could we return with the happy little
+mule-boy who has just now come “jödeling” down from the passes,
+doubtless we should find the sound of goat bells both romantic and
+soothing up there, and might even in time muster a respectable show of
+excitement over the passage of the four-horse diligences as they rattle
+by in storms of dust. Certainly we should come across many a charming
+little wayside inn far up those winding roads that climb to solitude,
+and they would have overhanging eaves and carved wooden balconies and
+boxes of rich orange nasturtiums before the tiny windows with the
+lozenge panes; and when we pushed open the door and walked in, there
+would be a great stone stove in a bar parlor and the face of William
+Tell on an old clock behind the door.</p>
+
+<p>One reads in “Hyperion” of a stolid Englishman so far forgetting his
+cherished reserve as to exclaim: “This Interlaken! This Interlaken! It
+is the loveliest spot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span> on the face of the earth!” It is a nice question
+as to whether any one might not easily be guilty of like enthusiasm,
+provided the time were evening, and that he were capable of responding
+to something of such passionate sympathy for mountain and valley as
+breathes through Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell.” It is impossible not to
+be moved by such unusual beauty or uplifted by such sublimity. Here
+jangled nerves recover rhythm and dulled interests vitality. Boredom
+and ennui fall away, and work and responsibility acquire new value and
+lustre. In the still of these pine-scented evenings, luminous with
+enormous stars, a keen and sobering joy of life takes full and welcome
+possession. Here, if anywhere, the sun of youth will have its afterglow.</p>
+
+<p>There is something like benediction in a night-vision of the magic
+Jungfrau—peerless “bride of quietness.” With such an appealing
+spectacle in view, what wonder that the houses have so many windows,
+or the night “a thousand eyes.” It is the master touch to Interlaken,
+completing and glorifying the picture as it banks the far end of
+the valley with towering clouds of snow. Neither Mont Blanc nor the
+Matterhorn may rival this queen of the Alps, so charming in outline,
+vast in bulk, and ravishing in purity. It could not fail to dominate
+any region of earth, and Interlaken acknowledges its supremacy with a
+completeness that is not without a certain flavor of proprietorship.
+Each hillside has its view-pavilion, belvedere, or simple clearing,
+like so many<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span> chapels for devotion. We come each morning for our
+sunrise view, pass the day in adoration, marvel at sunset and the
+afterglow, and close the evening with a wonderwist contemplation of
+the phantom peak in moonlight. Of these “stations” of the mount, the
+afterglow is the climax. Nor is the reason far to seek, once you have
+stood among the awed and reverent throng that crowds the Höhenmatte
+each late afternoon, and have seen black night about you in the valley,
+while, for an hour or more after, the snowfields of the Jungfrau’s
+summits still continued to blaze brilliantly in full sunshine. And
+then, as we watched, there came the color-miracle of glittering white
+merging into every hue of the rose, into scarlet stains and a deluge of
+crimson, into deepening tints and sombre shades of blue, and finally
+fading gradually to a misty, grayish, cloudy shadow as the last fires
+burned out and the great mountain paled to a phantom of the night.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent6">“When daylight dies,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">The azure skies</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Seem sparkling with a thousand eyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">That watch with grace</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">From depths of space</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The sleeping Jungfrau’s lovely face.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>How spirit-like, how faint and fair the magic mountain swims at night
+among its silver cloud veils! What serenity and majesty invest it! Did
+God here plan another flood, and stay His hand when He had heaped an
+angry ocean into this dread tidal wave and left it piled in suspended<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>
+motion, with giant frozen seas, furious with foam, mounting to that
+appalling crest that seems to dash its icy spray against the very
+skies? No man may look with undaunted heart upon the chaos of its
+glittering snowy plains, vast, chaste, and spectral in the moonlight.
+How base and contemptible appear the petty pursuits of man in the
+presence of such thrilling sublimity! It reconciles him to his lot in
+life, where his “much” is really so very little; and inspires courage,
+and shames the heart from low, ignoble ends.</p>
+
+<p>There is reverent awe in thoughts of the breathless hush of the far,
+white vales no man has trod; the remote and shuddering abysses into
+which the very birds of the air look down with affright. There is
+magic of inspiration in its sublime aloofness—as with those “unheard
+melodies that are sweetest,” those supremest joys that lie beyond
+attainment. Through the hidden, echoing caverns of this fair, pallid
+mount wan spirits of Snowland may even now be dancing; along its
+lonely, lovely glades are “horns of elfland faintly blowing.” Of its
+profoundest and most secret mysteries not even the friendly moon may
+have too curious knowledge—mysteries unknown of man since first the
+morning stars sang together.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_337">
+<img src="images/i_337.jpg" alt="" width="351" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="VENICE">VENICE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A July</span> moon over, a gondola under, a tenor lilting a <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">barcarolle</i>,
+thousands with you on the Grand Canal—Venice <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">a festa</i>! From a
+near-by belfry, a clock booms eleven. Eleven! and we are only to the
+Foscari Palace. An hour ago we started at the Rialto, a thousand gay
+gondolas with bunting, lanterns, and greens, everybody jostling,
+singing, and shouting, and in the centre, like the queen-jewel of a
+tiara, the brilliant <em>barca</em> filled with orchestra and singers
+and ablaze in a myriad of colored lights. This is a great occasion,
+the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">serenata ufficiale</i>. The <em>festa</em> of the Redentore is
+near its close. Church portals hang with mulberry branches begged by
+the monks of St. Francis, and the people have feasted royally on the
+luscious black fruit bought at the little stands on the Giudecca quays.
+Last Sunday the priestly procession in full canonicals crossed the
+bridge of boats to the Giudecca on its annual pilgrimage to the church
+of the Redentore. Venice thus sustains her reputation as a reverencer
+of traditions; they are burning lamps still in San Marco Cathedral for
+an innocent man who was put to death hundreds of years ago. And so the
+church<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span> of the Redentore is packed to suffocation at least one day of
+the year, and after that, with the religious rites off her mind, Venice
+suddenly gives up trying to look solemn and bursts out into the joy and
+tumult of the “Official Serenade.”</p>
+
+<p>This year it is splendid. Every moment belated gondolas are arriving
+like flocks of black swans, with fresh quotas of enthusiasm and an
+increase of gayety and confusion. What laughter and fun! The Canal is
+a hopeless jam. Dancing lanterns play light and shade on thousands
+of bright faces, and the gondoliers, in fresh white blouses and blue
+sailor collars, look like shadows as they lean silently on their
+long oars. In the intervals of the music there is something weird
+and frantic to both their labor and their language as they agonize
+to protect their beloved boats from scratches and smashes and at the
+same time retain positions of vantage in this ice-floe of a tangle as
+the <em>barca</em> struggles forward a few difficult yards to its next
+point of serenade. There are ten or a dozen of these serenade-points,
+and at each the writhing flotilla pauses, and singers and orchestra
+provide the entertainment. It is finest to be afloat, but, oh, the
+land! Red-and-green fire throws into enormous relief fairylike towers
+and turrets that have figured in song and story for a thousand
+years; and in windows, terraces, balconies, and tops there throngs
+a multitude that none of us may number. Every face is turned toward
+the <em>barca</em>; every handkerchief<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span> waves our way. An occasional
+searchlight darts impartially over them and us, picks out a spot in
+sudden brilliance and as suddenly drops it back into blacker obscurity.
+But in that brief flashing, scattered friends have discovered friends,
+and gondolas are started inching toward each other, and presently
+parties are joined and ice boxes uncovered. After covertly studying the
+apparently aimless movements of our own gondola I finally unearthed a
+dark conspiracy in the reunion line that interested only Paolo, our
+gondolier, and an occasional crony at a neighboring oar. Paolo’s face
+and manners are innocence itself, but his guile is fathoms deep. We
+could not understand why he did not get us nearer to the <em>barca</em>,
+the universal objective, until we saw the bottle pass between him
+and a raven-haired, flashing-toothed athlete at the nearest oar and
+surprised the quick greeting and low, musical laugh of congratulation
+and content. But who minds, with Venice <em>a festa</em>! And Venice is
+Paolo’s—not ours, alas!</p>
+
+<p>Night on the Grand Canal! What a realm of witchery! “The horns of
+elfland faintly blowing.” What lullaby could soothe more sweetly
+than the dip of the oar or the soft plash of the dark water under
+the gondola’s prow! The charm of unreality invests the shadowy,
+spiritualized palaces rising like silver wraiths from the quivering
+stream. The summer moon touches each carven arch and column, each
+stone-lace balcony, each fretted embrasure, each delicate ogive window
+and sculptured<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span> capital, and lo, a magician’s wand has reared a
+dream-land of unearthly beauty!</p>
+
+<p>In the soft and odorous darkness the birds that love this Venice are
+securely nesting—the gulls, that in winter whirl up the canals with
+harsh clamors of the coming storms, are now at rest along the beaches
+of their blue Adriatic; the swallows and pigeons are sleeping among
+the red tiles of the crooked gables; the sparrows are aloft among the
+mulberry-trees of the Giudecca and the sycamores of the Public Gardens;
+the canaries are dim spots in fragrant magnolia-trees or in spreading
+beds of purple oleander; and the ortolans, robins, and blackbirds
+nestle among azaleas and the heavy festoons of banksias. All their
+music now is hushed, and they are as mute and soundless to-night as
+were their awe-struck sires, long centuries since, when gentle St.
+Francis read them his offices under the cypresses of Del Deserto.</p>
+
+<p>The night is fragrant with the breath of roses, carnations, and
+camellias from palace gardens and with spicy honeysuckle from the
+neighboring Zattere. Visions of stirring romance and adventure crowd in
+on the mind. Down the pebbly paths of yonder garden surely some lover
+has just passed, brave in velvet doublet and silken hose, from laying
+his roses at the satin-slippered feet of his lady! Presently he will
+drift this way in his cushioned gondola and the soft night winds will
+bear her the mellow throb of his guitar and many a plaintive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span> sigh
+of love and Venice. But hush! from out that old black watergate, in
+bravo’s cloak and with muffled oar, who bears the helpless lady away
+through the deep shadows under the garden wall? Hard with your oar,
+my gondolier! A purse of golden ducats if you speed me to San Marco!
+I shall slip this scribbled note into the Lion’s Mouth! Ho, for the
+vengeance of The Ten!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_343">
+<img src="images/i_343.jpg" alt="" width="442" height="600">
+<p class="caption center">VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If it were day, what a different scene we should have on this twisting
+sea-serpent of a Grand Canal. Venice would then be a sparkling vision
+resplendent with every sea charm, tinted with pinks and opals and
+pearls, and as changeful and full of caprice as any other coquette.
+Instead of this spangle of stars above, we should have a vast expanse
+of pale-blue sky, cloudless and glittering, and the misty reflections
+that now sink faintly deep down into these dark waters would vanish
+before a stream so azure and brilliant that it would seem as if a
+portion of the sky above had been cut and fitted between the palace
+fronts below. And how these mellow old churches and houses would glow
+and their wavering shadows shake in the stream! The exquisite traceries
+on balcony, arch, and column would seem carven of ivory, and from
+under the red-tiled eaves grim heads of stone would stare down over
+sculptured cornices and peep out through delicate quatrefoils and
+creamy foliations. And into these wonder-palaces the eager sun would
+peer to see the lofty ceilings all frescoed and gilded, the floors of
+colored marbles, the carven furniture and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span> faded rich hangings, and the
+deep and arched recesses that overlook the gardens in the rear. And
+what gardens! Mellow brick walls festooned in pale-blue wistaria and
+lined with hedges of white thorn, a solemn cypress in either corner,
+clumps of fig-trees and mulberry and golden magnolia, airy grapevine
+pergolas of slender, osier-bound willow, little paths snugly bordered
+with box, trellises of gorgeous roses, and here and there some antique
+statue or rude stone urn half hidden in color masses of scarlet
+pomegranates and snowy lilies.</p>
+
+<p>The day-life of this famed waterway is very gay and picturesque. Here
+is both energy and idleness, and jolly friendships and laughter and
+light-heartedness. Deep-laden market scows pass ponderously by, piled
+high with fruits and vegetables, the rowers singing at their oars or
+shouting voluble greetings. Fishermen step slowly along, balancing
+baskets on their heads. Swarthy, black-eyed women, in dark skirts and
+gay neckerchiefs and with mauve-colored shawls falling gracefully from
+head to waist, throng the <em>riva</em> shops and bargain over purchases
+with violent gestures and eager earnestness. Priests returning from
+mass in rusty black cassocks loiter among the noisy groups and are
+received with profound bows and reverent touches of the cap. Husky,
+barefooted girl water-carriers, known as the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">bigolanti</i>, stride
+by with copper vessels hanging from the yoke across their shoulders
+and offer you a supply for a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span> <em>soldo</em>. Up the intersecting canals
+endless processions are passing over the arching bridges, and you
+pause, perhaps, to observe the varied life from a place by the rail:
+girl bead-stringers with wooden trays full of turquoise bits; garrulous
+pleasure parties off for the Lido; laboring boatmen, breaking out into
+song; old men and women shuffling along to gossip and quarrel around
+the carven well-heads of the little <em>campi</em>; and now and then
+some withered old aristocrat on his way to have coffee and chess at
+Florian’s and then a solemn smoke over the “Gazetta di Venezia” before
+the Caffè Orientale in the warm morning sun of the <em>riva</em> of the
+Schiavoni.</p>
+
+<p>How well the Foscari Palace, there, looks by night. The Foscari
+Palace—poor old Foscari! It is a sad but glowing chapter his name
+recalls. Here lived the great Doge, the least serene of all their
+Serenities. Grown old in power and worn with foreign wars, his heart
+broke over the treason of his worthless son, and the helpless, sobbing
+old man, no longer of use, was deposed by The Ten in his tottering
+age. The very next day he died—and there, in that palace. Just now,
+when the red-fire glowed, a pale campanile stood out of the gloom to
+the right and beyond the palace; that is where they buried him, in the
+church of the Frari. With belated reverence and remorseful at having
+dishonored him a few hours since, they proceeded to make history in
+Venice with the splendor of his obsequies. They clothed him in cloth of
+gold, set his ducal cap upon his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span> head, buckled on his golden spurs,
+and laid his great sword by his side. And thus in solemn pomp, attended
+by nobles and lighted by countless tapers, the pageant passed out of
+San Marco, crossed the Rialto, and came at last to the church of the
+Frari. And there what is left of Doge Foscari lies to this day. It
+is not a poor place to be in, either. The bones of Titian and Canova
+are beside him, a Titian masterpiece glorifies the choir, and on the
+opposite wall are two altar pieces of Bellini’s so lovely as to mark
+the very zenith of Venetian art.</p>
+
+<p>A pause in the music of the serenade brings us suddenly back to the
+Venice of to-night. A vast scramble is in progress. We jostle and
+scrape forward another few yards. The <em>barca</em> sends a light
+hose-spray to right, left, and in front in a desperate effort to clear
+a passage. Dilatory or helpless gondoliers are lightly sprinkled,
+and all those of us who a moment since had been envying their good
+positions now basely give way to howls of joy. No use to struggle:
+all gondoliers are alike in such a crush. A champion Castellani is
+no better than Paolo, if he <em>is</em> strong enough to bend copper
+<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">centesimi</i> pieces between thumb and finger. Presently we stop.
+The tumult rages, good-naturedly and jolly, as the jockeying goes on
+for improved positions. And then there falls a sudden silence. A tenor
+is singing the “Cielo e Mar” of “La Gioconda.” You lie at full length
+on the cushions, the gondola lifting slowly with an indolent sway, and
+under the spell of the dreamy,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span> witching music you watch the smoke of
+your cigar as it drifts up and over and out and away toward the little
+streets in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, little streets of Venice; under whatever name of <em>calle</em> or
+<em>corto</em> or <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">salizzada</i>, you are just the same—bedraggled
+and delightful! What rare surprises are always reserved for each
+revisit—an overlooked doorway, a balcony, some sculptured detail!
+If the house-fronts are plastered and patched—still they are
+picturesquely discolored. If the fantastic windows are out of plumb the
+gay shutters, nevertheless, are charmingly faded and there are pretty
+faces behind the bars. The roofs let in the rain—but how rookish and
+rickety they are. The battered doors are low—but they have knockers
+that are ponderous and imposing. Name plates are surprisingly large
+and keyholes deep and cavernous. The stirrup-handled bell-wires run
+almost to the tiny iron balconies, away up under the oval windows of
+the eaves—those little balconies that for ages have never refused
+sympathetic regard for the hum of slippered feet on the stone pavements
+below. And there are weathered store-fronts with corrugated iron
+shutters and gilt signs on black boards; and under your feet in the
+pavement are odd little slits for water to run off in, that remind you
+of openings in letter-drops at home. There, too, are the shops whose
+modest output arrays the Venetian poor to such advantage, and there
+are the stores and markets where they bargain for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span> <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">frittole</i> of
+white flour and oil, or <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">polenta</i> of ground corn, and personally
+pick out their sardines at ten for a penny, or indulge in a fine
+<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">brunrino</i> as large as a trout. There one sees picturesque
+lanterns and gay little window-boxes full of flowers away up among
+the chimneys and tin waterpipes. The rooms, perhaps, seem dark and
+gloomy to us of modern houses, but you stop with a thrill of delight
+at the happiness in the voice that carols a gay air from “Traviata”
+somewhere in their depths, and you look up with a smile at the bright
+bird that loves that dark cage. Some carping and fussy visitors may
+compare these rude homes to the dungeons under the “Leads” beyond the
+Bridge of Sighs, but how could they consistently be other than they
+are, venerable and dirty, with splotches of paint and charcoal markings
+and half-effaced pencil-drawings, of cracked plaster full of holes,
+and all toned down by time and weather to a uniform mellow gray! Of
+course, such critics accept, with all Italy, the proud ones with the
+marble tablets that tell that Marco Polo lived there, or Petrarch,
+or Titian, or Garibaldi, but the nameless and undistinguished many
+are quite as worth preserving. Thus one appreciates the inspiration
+of the authorities and applauds their industry in profusely tacking
+up those little ovals of blue tin with the jealous warning in white
+letters, “Divieto di Affisione”—that is, “Don’t spoil these walls
+with placards!” So, peace, harping Philistine, to whom nothing is ever
+hallowed! Though your emotions are thin<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span> and your enthusiasms a-chill,
+respect these little byways; and if not for themselves, then for where
+they bring you—to fascinating curiosity shops of the antiquarians up
+the back courts; to charming <em>campi</em> where you stand by graven
+well-heads, wonderwist in the lengthening shadows of historic churches;
+to lichen-grown bridges, themselves pictures, arched over sunny canals
+overhung by gabled windows and flanked by garden walls pale blue with
+wistaria; or (could you have forgotten?) to nothing less than the great
+Piazza itself and glittering San Marco, the supreme jewel-casket of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>But the wistful “Cielo e Mar” is ended, and we move along to opposite
+the Accademia, treasure-temple of Venetian art. You uncovered just
+then, my comrade of the night, and out of reverence to the Titian
+Assumption, I dare say. I uncovered, too, but it was to the madonnas
+and saints of Giovanni Bellini. Do you know them well? No? Not the
+Santa Conversazione? Ah, then life still holds a delight in reserve for
+you.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden great and universal hush has fallen on canal and shore.
+Another tenor, sweet and vibrant as a bell, breathes that tenderest of
+all serenades, the one from “Don Pasquale.” At all times irresistible,
+it seems doubly so now. The faces that you see are grave and eager
+and transported. The silence and rapt attention is a tribute beyond
+words to composer and singer; and where else but in Italy would a
+multitude hush to a whisper when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span> music sounds, and break into wild
+tumult when it ceases? A few weeks here, and one comes to understand
+that music is the very breath and life of these people. The vagabond
+Venetian, penniless but happy, comes out of his doze in a corner of a
+sunny <em>riva</em> and before his mouth has settled from its yawn it is
+rounded into a song. A bottle of cheap wine, a loaf of bread, and a
+guitar provide joy enough for an army in the family parties of the poor
+that float out on to the lagoon in rough market gondolas at sunset.
+Verdi and Rossini make work light for women, walk to business with
+the men, and hum comfort and courage all day. And so one needs to be
+discreet and silent when a solo begins or be prepared for an instant
+and tempestuous rebuke. But there seems little need for a warning
+to-night, with the hand of Venice so strong upon us.</p>
+
+<p>Between serenades one takes his ease on the cushions and looks about
+on the people around him. Some one begins to whistle the jolly old
+“Carnival of Venice,” and it is promptly taken up on all sides, bolder
+spirits even venturing upon the variations. A German gives us the
+Fatherland’s version, about the hat that had three corners. An enormous
+Spaniard near at hand bellows a fragment of “I Pagliacci,” and is
+thunderously applauded. His friends, embarrassed but elated, urge him
+on to a second effort, which is received with indifference. On his
+third attempt he is hissed. Such is the caprice of an open-air audience
+in Italy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span></p>
+
+<p>The jolly stag party in the gondola to the right presses upon us the
+hospitality of the capacious hamper, which we decline with a thousand
+thanks and in gestures more intelligible than our pidgin-Italian.
+At our elbow two slender American women in black provide excellent
+eavesdropping entertainment. Here is talk to our liking, thrilling with
+the names of men of fame who knew and loved this Venice. “Just over
+there, Helen, is the palace where Browning lived and died. What an
+elaborate place for a poet! Howells lived next door, you know, when he
+wrote his ‘Venetian Life.’ These places are ever so much finer than the
+one farther down where Goldoni wrote his comedies. Oh, don’t you know
+the Goldoni house? It is this side the Rialto, just opposite the Byron
+Palace with the blue-striped gondola posts.” “I think,” says the other,
+“that the memories are quite as rich farther on. At the Hotel Europa,
+you remember, Chateaubriand once lived, and so did George Eliot; and
+from there you can see the Danieli where George Sand and Alfred de
+Musset sought happiness but only found misery.” At mention of the
+Europa the face of her friend is transfigured and our own hearts beat
+high in sympathy with the reverence of the lowered voice: “Wagner wrote
+‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Europa. He died in the palace where the
+three trees stand, away down beyond the Rialto.” Oh, deathless Venice!
+Oh, universal Love! They marvel at this elfin world—the English
+father, mother, and son in the gondola ahead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It is a mode of mind.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or a form of hypnosis; a psychological phase.”</p>
+
+<p>The boy turns from the distant fairy candles of San Marco and regards
+them with amaze and disapproval. His enthusiasms are keen and a-quiver
+and the freshness of life’s morning is on his face. “Don’t analyze,”
+he says. “Just breathe it and feel it.” The parents exchange amused
+glances and smile indulgently. “‘Out of the mouth of babes and
+sucklings,’” quotes the father under his breath; but we know, and they
+know, that they have been answered.</p>
+
+<p>Gorgeous silks and priceless tapestries and rare Oriental stuffs have
+doubtless often hung from the balconies of the palace on the right in
+the great gala days of the wonderful past when the Carnival lasted
+half a year. The law had not yet ruled that all gondolas must be a
+uniform solemn black, and the cradle-like boat of to-day, for all its
+brass dolphins and carven scenes from the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” would
+have cut a sorry figure beside the sumptuous ones of an earlier time,
+with their mountings of silver and gold, profusion of rich colors,
+upholstery of enormous value, and bearing owners of fabulous wealth
+whose names were written in the city’s Book of Gold. Ah, those were
+the triumphant days when foreign princes waited, half a hundred at a
+time, to have the judgment of the Venetian Senate on the affairs of
+their states; when royalty was no unusual spectacle on the Piazza of
+San Marco; when the argosies<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span> of the world, “with portly sail,” came
+to anchor in these waters; when Dante and Petrarch were received as
+ambassadors; when the Admirable Crichton would be tossed a hundred
+ducats for amusing the Senate with an extemporized Latin oration; and
+when his Serenity, the Doge, on Ascension Day fared forth in dazzling
+splendor to espouse the sea from the throne of his sumptuous Bucentoro.
+The glory of that old and powerful Venice can never pass from the
+memory of men. Whole libraries preserve it in imperishable record. It
+is interesting, too, to note how it affected bygone visitors just as it
+does us to-day—as when one turns the pages of John Evelyn’s “Diary”
+and smiles to see how soon it was after his “portmanteau” had been
+“visited” at the Dogana customs-offices that he pronounced the Merceria
+to be “one of the most delicious streets in the world for the sweetness
+of it,” and learned with amaze of the skill and rapidity of Venetian
+artisans who, while King Henry <abbr title="the third">III</abbr> of England was one day visiting the
+Arsenal, built a galley, rigged, and finished it for launching, and
+cast a cannon of sixteen thousand pounds and put it on board,—and
+all while his Majesty was having luncheon. There was, indeed, a great
+deal of the marvelous about men who could contrive glass goblets so
+sensitive as to betray the presence of poison, or who could at so early
+an age make such exquisite books as the Aldine classics, to the despair
+of publishers for hundreds of years to follow.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span></p>
+
+<p>Just now, in the fitful glare of red-lights, hundreds of eager Venetian
+faces, transported as always by the spirit of Carnival, were seen
+in excited groupings in every nook and corner of the neighboring
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fondamente</i>. One thinks how different is the present scene from
+those these people are accustomed to look upon on other nights. You
+would find them then in the little family squares whose corners are
+shrines of the Virgin set with flowers and illumined with candles.
+Husband and wife will, perhaps, have spent the early evening in gallery
+seats at the Teatro Goldoni, and Giovanni, weary with a long day at
+the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">traghetto</i>, would have finished thumbing the headlines of
+the day’s “L’ Adriatico” and would now have his friends about him,
+and Maria would let the <em>bambino</em> stay up a little longer, and
+all would feast with prodigious merriment and satisfaction on the
+ever-popular <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">soupe au pidocchi</i>,—which is mussel-broth flavored
+with spices,—to be followed by Chioggia eels and white wine of
+Policella. Neighboring women would, of course, drop in for their dearly
+loved gossip, hatless, with silver pins fastening their blue-black
+hair, coral beads around their necks, and draping shawls thrown over
+their bright waists. And presently some withered old coffee-roaster
+would drag himself in with his fragrant ovens glowing, the bright
+flames leaping, and toffee-venders would plead for sales. With the
+ease of sleight-of-hand a guitar suddenly makes its appearance out
+of nowhere and everybody enthusiastically joins in some haunting,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span>
+languorous, dreamy <em>villotte</em> dear to the hearts of Venetians.
+Just around the corner lounging groups would be scattered before
+café doors and voices would be humming in low, eager talk. The usual
+wrangling and bargaining would be in progress at the cooking-stalls
+piled high with fish and garlic, <em>polenta</em>, cabbages, and apples.
+In near-by <em>trattorie</em> with sanded floors artistic bohemia, with
+ambition numbed by the latest African sirocco, battens on bowls of
+macaroni in a turmoil of smoke and confusion. In the dark interior of
+a neighboring wineshop one would find the wonderful golden-browns that
+Rembrandt loved, as a single oil lamp glows on the weathered faces of
+a circle of old cronies. And somewhere, just at hand, a gondolier’s
+weird and fascinating cry of “Ah, Stalì!” would be heard; and all about
+them Venice would be crooning her ancient lullaby in the ceaseless, low
+lapping of water on stone steps.</p>
+
+<p>All together and forward once more, to opposite the church of the
+Salute. We have lost our recent neighbors and have an entirely new
+set. The changes in the grouping are like the shuffling units of a
+kaleidoscope. A brilliant company is gathered on the balconies of
+Desdemona’s Palace, but Othello is not among them—another piece of
+calculated devilty, no doubt, on the part of the crafty Iago! Still,
+Portia is there from flowery Belmont and with her are Jessica and
+Lorenzo. The music is now from melodious old “Dinorah,” charmingly
+rendered and just as soothing as the first time<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span> one ever heard it.
+The Salute stands out impressively in her great domes and elaborate
+spirals. It is beautiful, of course, by night, but then if it were day
+we might run inside and revel in Titians and Tintorettos. The fantastic
+columns fade and flash as the red and green fires smoulder or flame,
+and the gilded Fortuna on the dome of the adjoining Dogana catches some
+of the glitter and generously sends it on to the Seminario in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>Some one calls my name from among the oleanders of the Britannia
+terrace, just opposite. What a delight to be known by name in this
+charmed city! I look up at the adjoining hotel and there are the
+windows of my room, and I know that within in the dark my clothing and
+articles of travel lie about. With secret wonder I whisper to myself
+that I, after all the years of waiting and hoping, <em>I</em> am actually
+a part of Venice!</p>
+
+<p>One might think there could not possibly be any more gondolas in all
+the city outside of to-night’s tremendous gathering; but even now you
+could find them floating lazily about the lagoons, or away out toward
+the Lido where the moist winds are ruffling the water and the distant
+Bride of the Sea seems only some sort of bright exhalation. Theirs is
+a languorous and listless drifting and their dim lamps waver slowly
+like glowworms. Little need there for the musical wails of “Ah, Premì!”
+“Ah, Stalì!” Little of such complaint as Byron made that gondoliers are
+songless, for one could not ask for more plaintive and soothing melody
+than the low, passionate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span> crooning of the barefooted boy at the oar.
+And, perhaps, in the musky dark of silent canals more gondolas than one
+are even now stealing lightly and with love’s devious purposes under
+the fretted balconies of the star-eyed daughters of Venice, while Beppo
+muffles his oar to the warning of Tom Moore:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Row gently here, my gondolier;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">So softly wake the tide,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">That not an ear on earth may hear</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Save hers to whom we glide!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It seems weeks since, in the cool of this very morning, out at the
+little island of Burano, I lunched under shady locusts in the quiet
+garden of “The Crowned Lion.” It was a pleasant stop on the way to
+deserted old Torcello—Torcello that mothered Venice, but now sleeps,
+a clutter of grass-grown ruins, in the appalling stillness of her
+weedy canals and thickets of blackberry hedges. Within a cable length
+of where our gondola is now resting a black, tarry fishing-bark tugs
+at anchor. If it were day and her sails were set, one could not help
+being delighted over the oranges and reds and blues of her patched and
+weathered canvas, the curve of the elaborately painted bow, and the
+spirited air of the curious figurehead. Unchanged survivors of the
+fading Past are these sturdy old <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">bragozzi</i> of Chioggia, and one
+could not ask for a braver show than they present when they hoist their
+painted sails to dry in one long line from the Public Gardens to the
+Doge’s Palace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was at Chioggia that we loitered, a few days back, and fed on
+picturesqueness to satiety. We have but to close our eyes—and there
+are the grizzled old fellows in red <em>berrettas</em>, trousers rolled
+to their wiry brown knees and great hoops of yellow gold in their ears.
+When the midday sun was hottest we found them sitting in the shade of
+their fishing-boats’ sails, mending their nets with wooden bodkins and
+brown twine. In the old days, when the hand of Venice was all-powerful
+in this part of the world, the Chioggians were the gayest and most
+picturesque people of these islands. Artists still consider them the
+purest types of Venetians, but they are a sad and melancholy lot now,
+as if burdened with the heritage of glorious memories. It seemed to me
+that the old men were the happiest living things in Chioggia; then,
+perhaps, came the boys, then the girls, and last of all the women—and
+the older the women the gloomier. The flirt of a sober mantilla is the
+nearest they ever come nowadays to gayety.</p>
+
+<p>We shall never forget, nor ever want to, that wonderful sail back from
+Chioggia to Venice. Listening to the music on the Canal to-night the
+memory of it seems compact of dreams, or as the florid cloister-fancy
+of a Middle-Ages monk that we had read in some illuminated old volume
+bound in vellum and clasped with gold. There was all the vitalizing
+pageantry of sunset about us, all the immensity of sky and sea, and
+many a bright little island rising out of the rippling lagoon this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span>
+side the marshy wastes. The yellow strips of Pellestrina and Malamocco
+topped the waves in two long lines, like half-submerged reefs of gold.
+Above was a vast dome of turquoise glinted with pinks and grays, and
+with here and there a little heap of snowy clouds. Every phase of the
+wonderful sky was reproduced in the water. The sun reflected a second
+sun of no less ruddy fire which burned across the sea in a broad
+highway of shaking light that rolled to our very feet. The piled and
+fleecy clouds were steeped in gold, and bands of purple mists across
+Shelley’s Euganean Hills were pierced by it through and through.
+Venice, a mirage of the azure sea, rose slowly as we drew nearer, a
+witchery of towers, campaniles, palaces, painted sails, and drifting
+gondolas. As the dimming beauty faded with the brief Eastern twilight
+and we were gazing in awe on the enchanting panorama, there suddenly
+loomed a fresh and added glory, for just above the topmost pinnacle of
+stately San Giorgio floated a young summer moon!</p>
+
+<p>Beauty has here an abiding-place. Venice is doubtless a fairer vision
+now, with its myriad lights, than when the only illumination was
+from flickering tapers before the corner shrines of the Virgin. More
+comfortable it surely is than when St. Roche himself was baffled by
+more than seventy plagues. The jaunty boatman and his peerless gondola
+still charm us, and dustless and noiseless the city continues musical
+with the cheery hum of voices and the soft shuffle of feet. In the
+cool<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span> twilight of the churches marvels of sculpture and immortal
+canvases still inspire and enthrall. Time has added new charms to the
+marbles of bell tower, church, and palace, and nature still employs
+a witchery scarce equaled elsewhere in decking the Sea City with
+flowers. From the water-lilies of the Brenta, the flaming begonia
+trumpets of the Giudecca, the pale sea-lavender of the Dead Lagoon, the
+rose-pergolas and oleander-cloisters of San Lazzaro, the primroses and
+sea-holly of the Lido wooded with odorous acacias and white-flowered
+catalpas, and carpeted with crimson poppies and the snowy Star of
+Bethlehem, away out to the sand dunes and lush grasses of Triporti,
+there continually rises an inexhaustible incense of fragrance and
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>The serenade is nearly ended. Anticipating the coming rush at the
+San Marco Piazza, a word to Paolo starts us laboriously toward the
+outskirts of the flotilla. From the Royal Gardens to the <em>molo</em>
+is a matter of only a dozen plunges or so of the stout oar, spurred
+by an offer of extra <em>lire</em> for extra speed. Off flies our
+gondola, frowning as superbly as ever did swan in the eye of Keats.
+We dart alongside the wet quay beyond the Bridge of Sighs and one
+of those superannuated old gondoliers called <em>rampini</em> earns a
+<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">pourboire</i> by steadying the prow as we jump ashore at the base
+of the column of San Marco’s winged lion. St. Theodore looks down
+placidly from the vantage-point above his crocodile as we pass between
+these storied pillars—“fra Marco e<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span> Todaro,” as the Venetians say when
+they mean “between pillar and post.” The <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">piazzetta</i> is already
+crowded and our hope of a table at Florian’s is dwindling. Never did
+the stately Sansovino Library or the airy colonnades and warm Moorish
+marbles of the Palace of the Doges look finer, but past them we speed
+with no time for the scantiest of glances at the famous quatrefoils
+and the thirty-six pillars with the renowned capitals, and in we hurry
+to the broad and glorious piazza and its flooding of light and life.
+Florian’s is in a state of siege. Every table seems taken and hungry
+people by hundreds are clamoring for places. The Quadri, across the
+square, would probably have had to content us had not the efficacy
+of frequent past tips saved the day, and my nightly waiter welcomes
+us with his dry and mirthless smile and slips us into a snug harbor
+under the very guns of the enemy. My companions are officers of the
+American squadron now lying at Triest and they pass their professional
+opinion that the strategy was capital. But though officers, they are
+<em>young</em> officers, and Venice has captured them hand and foot.
+Scarcely have we completed our supper-order when the flowing strains of
+the Coronation March from “The Prophet” roll in from the <em>molo</em>
+in the <em>barca’s</em> good night, and, as if it were riding in on that
+splendid musical tide, the noisy, jubilant host of the <em>festa</em>
+comes pouring upon us.</p>
+
+<p>And what a fascinating spectacle does this grand, unrivaled old square
+then present! Were Byron here<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span> to-night he would still have to call
+it “the pleasant place of all festivity.” No chance now to study the
+designs in this vast flooring of marble or to coax a half-persuaded
+pigeon on to your shoulder. In every part of its two hundred yards of
+arcaded length, set with storied architecture so inspiring by beauty
+and association that it moved even the self-contained Mr. Howells to
+exclaim, “It makes you glad to be living in this world,” and under the
+blaze of its rimming of clustered lights and shops and thronged cafés,
+there storms and chatters a vigorous, cheery, light-hearted multitude
+fresh from the stimulus of the glittering water pageant. It comes in
+through the <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">piazzetta</i> with such a rush that one looks for the
+band and band-stand, too, to be swept the full length of the square and
+out under the arches of the Royal Palace. Such laughing and uproar!
+Such a sirocco of gestures and hailstorm of crackling exclamations!
+This human tidal wave of the Adriatic pours down the middle, seethes
+along the edges, and swirls and eddies in the remotest corners. One
+sees in it happy, voluntary exiles from almost every part of the world,
+but to-night the <em>festa</em>-loving Venetians predominate. Every local
+type is here; from the languid patrician, come in from her country
+estate and now sipping anise-water here at Florian’s, and the vapid
+and scented fashionable youths with carnations in their buttonholes,
+to the flashing, black-eyed shop-girls with red roses in their crisp
+black hair and graceful mantilla shawls dropping back from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span> their
+tossing heads, and the vigorous, smiling artisans, easy and jaunty of
+gait, with soft hats pushed back at every rakish angle on their curly
+heads. How happy and transported Maria is to-night, in her new black
+skirt and crimson bodice, and how the sultry red smoulders through the
+olive of her cheeks as her little hands whirl in a tempest of gestures
+and the lightnings of excitement play in her midnight eyes! And no less
+carried away is Giovanni, beside her,—proud as Colleoni on the big
+bronze horse,—though he lets her do most of the talking and contents
+himself with approving in quick, expressive shrugs. All classes of
+society are with us—“rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief”; and old
+Shylock himself, who was most of these, “dreaming of money-bags.”
+Scraps of gay, slurring song are continually bubbling over and flashes
+of wit and snappy repartees go flying to and fro. Flower-girls thread
+the press and insist upon pinning <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">boutonnières</i> on the men,
+and street merchants move about offering everything from curios to
+caramel-on-a-stick. A crowd gathers about a blind old troubadour
+thrumming a dirty guitar and struggling to force his rusty voice along
+the melodious course of some popular <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">villotte</i>, and presently he
+will be led among the tables before the cafés and <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">centesimi</i> and
+silver <em>lire</em> will jingle into his ragged hat.</p>
+
+<p>It is little enough to say that no scene ever had a more romantic
+setting. The quaint old Venetian quatrain does this famed spot scant
+justice:—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And chargers four that seem about to fly;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">There is a timepiece which appears a tower,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the moonlight the sculptured and arcaded old buildings glow like
+mellow ivory around three sides of it, and it is warmed and vitalized
+by bustling cafés and brilliant shop windows set with tempting snares
+of artful jewelry and cunningly wrought glass. Strong and proud the
+great Campanile towers upward into the clear night, away above the tops
+of the three tall flag-staffs. The sumptuous Cathedral, in its wealth
+of glowing color and lavish adornment, makes one think of a vast heap
+of glittering treasure piled up by returning Venetian pirates in answer
+to the accustomed question, “What have you brought back for Marco?”
+One can scarcely take his eyes off its lofty, yawning portals, its
+gates of bronze, its forest of columns, its sweeping arches glowing in
+every color of brilliant mosaics, its profusion of creamy sculptures,
+its canopied saints and statued pinnacles and its great Byzantine
+domes billowing into the purple sky. On the ancient clock tower of the
+Merceria the fierce winged lion of St. Mark’s holds a resolute paw on
+the open Gospels, and the bronze bellringers swing twelve ponderous
+blows and hang up the hour of midnight on a dial of blue and gold.
+As they pause at the completion of their labors and look down on the
+sea of faces turned toward them from the Piazza they seem<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span> so nearly
+galvanized into life that it would scarcely surprise one to hear them
+shout, “What news of the argosies of Antonio?”</p>
+
+<p>With the sparkling beauty of Venice so irresistible it is a terrible
+temptation to my companions to hurry straight back to Triest and come
+over with their battleship and, like dashing naval Lochinvars, force
+an espousal of this incomparable Bride of the Sea. Vain thought! It is
+Venice herself who has always done the espousing; fully to possess her
+it must be on her own conditions of complete surrender.</p>
+
+<p>How inevitable it seems at night that you must take the step; must
+cry out, once and for all, to fellow voyagers on the Dead Lagoons of
+Life: “Ho, brothers! No more of the drab and wretched wastes for me! I
+am for beauty and romance—‘in Venice, all golden, to dream!’ I shall
+dwell in this enchanted realm of <em>dolce far niente</em> and float with
+my gondola into the final Sunset. Companions <span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span>on Life’s waters, ‘Ah,
+Stalì’!”</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_369">
+<img src="images/i_369.jpg" alt="" width="371" height="600">
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PARIS">PARIS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Like</span> a practiced coquette, Paris, the world’s <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">enchanteresse</i>,
+reserves for the supreme moments of midnight her rarest resources of
+gayety and charm. Her last laughs are her best. And decidedly, she is
+dangerous when laughing. Beyond question, her glowing eyes at midnight
+are wonderfully sweet and beguiling; and hers is the skill to touch the
+bright hours with the most delectable <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">couleur de rose</i>. There is
+satisfaction for each desire. “Would monsieur sup?” The most amazing
+cuisine in the world awaits your pleasure. “Would monsieur stroll?”
+The sparkling lights and rustling trees of the fairest of boulevards
+fairly drag you their way. “Would he drive?” You raise your hand; a
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fiacre</i> dashes up; and soon the Bois and the Champs-Élysées,
+cool, scented, dewy, receive you gladly to their enchanting retreats.
+“Would he join a revel—just a little one?” <em>Cabarets</em>,
+<em>cafés-chantants</em>, <em>bals publics</em> were designed for no
+other purpose. “Would he look on at life?” “<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Garçon vite! Une
+demi-tasse—une; sur la terrasse!</i>”—and heart could not ask for a
+madder, merrier, more absorbing spectacle than that which will whirl
+and surge by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span> very edge of your little round table. “Eh? Monsieur
+has a fancy for nature and solitude? <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu! C’est un original,
+celui-là! Mais</i>”—and you will find nowhere gardens lovelier than
+those of the Tuileries, elegant with statues and carpeted with flowers.
+Thus at every point the charmer wins. What is left but surrender? She
+seems the very Queen of Heart’s Desire.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the night side of Paris is her most trivial side. But then
+visitors have always refused to take her seriously at any time. No
+matter how many wonderful achievements have been crying out to them all
+day that this is one of the most extraordinary and advanced communities
+to be found anywhere on the face of the earth, still they stubbornly
+cling to the conviction that all is frivolity here and that night is
+Paris’s supreme period and pleasure seeking her most conspicuous and
+characteristic rôle. Accustomed to the droll ideas of foreigners,
+and bothering little about them except to find occasional amusement,
+Paris shrugs her shoulders in indifference and turns on more lights.
+Brilliant, charming, and ingenious she creates what she prefers—an
+atmosphere of gayety and beauty. And the visiting world purrs about her
+in joy of a fascination it cannot find elsewhere and salves its own
+patriotism with the conclusion that this is her principal <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">raison
+d’être</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the Parisians are masters of the art of living.
+As their kitchen is the best, so is their drawing-room and study.
+All the affairs of every day<span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span> are handled with ease and grace, with
+imagination and a kind of poetic skill that adorns even the ugly
+and commonplace and invests them with attractiveness and charm. The
+cheery light-heartedness that is a fundamental trait of Parisians
+converts the life of their streets and parks into scenes delightful
+either to contemplate or share. Indeed, they often seem to be only
+grown-up children, so gracefully have they retained the fresh and
+stimulating enthusiasm of youth—so rueful and pouting over a rainy
+day; so exuberant over a bright one. And the best of it is that there
+is an infection to their high spirits that passes into the observer
+and clears his perception of the folly of worry and depression, and
+shows him the value and availableness of optimism and good cheer. Such
+is the glorious influence of a people whose attitude toward life is
+essentially one of hope and zest.</p>
+
+<p>No one is going to deny that the Parisian is vain. Indeed, his attitude
+toward the rest of the earth, while patient and polite, is at bottom
+patronizing and even a little supercilious. And sometimes, it must
+be confessed, this gets on the visitor’s nerves. One cannot give out
+admiration forever and rest content with getting none back. It is
+easy to understand the mood of bitter derision into which even so
+enthusiastic an admirer as Edmondo de Amicis fell when he wrathfully
+wrote: “Three hundred ‘citizens’ hang over the side of a bridge to
+see a dog washed; if a drum passes, a crowd collects; and a thousand
+people, in one railway station, make a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span> tremendous uproar by clapping
+their hands, shouting, and laughing because one of the guards of the
+train has lost his hat!” Yet De Amicis came shortly to see that this
+is only the Parisian temperament, which he admired in so many other
+of its manifestations, and that under it lie solid qualities of the
+highest and rarest order. So he forgave Paris, as everyone does, and
+took her again to his heart—albeit, I mistrust, with reservation and
+a lingering grain of suspicion and perhaps something of the foreign
+conviction that she is not always to be taken quite seriously.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="i_375">
+<img src="images/i_375.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="453">
+<p class="caption center">PARIS, ON THE BOULEVARD</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>To the vast majority of visitors Paris by night means the boulevards.
+The beauty of these famed thoroughfares, the cosmopolitan and
+fascinating sea of humanity that flows through them, the means
+of amusement that abound, and all the many little refinements of
+comfort and elegance to be seen on every hand place them in a class
+by themselves among the city streets of the world. In the matter of
+virility the life of the boulevards is amazing. Every one seems to be
+at his keenest when he walks there. Anticipation is fairly skipping on
+tiptoe. The old <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">boulevardier</i>, the traditional <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">flâneur</i>,
+has not been disappointed of his evening’s diverting on-look these
+forty years or more, and he can, therefore, clothed and gloved and
+caned <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à la mode</i>, proceed with his stroll in unhasting dignity,
+confident that the usual amusing spectacle will unfold itself in good
+time. But the new arrivals and the visitors of a few weeks show in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span>
+their eager faces that nothing is going to escape them and that a
+thorough debauch of pleasure is the least they propose to make out
+of all the bewildering light and life about them. From the Place de
+la Concorde to the Place de la République a laughing, brilliant,
+light-hearted multitude pours along all night with infinite bustle
+and chatter. Between twelve and one o’clock it is at its gayest. The
+theatres and <em>cafés-concerts</em> have emptied their audiences into
+the stream, which is swollen to the very curb, and the driveways are
+whirling with an enormous outpouring of busses, motors, and cabs.
+The size of the loads the hired victorias and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fiacres</i> will
+accommodate is determined solely by the inclination and interest of
+the impertinent fat <em>cocher</em> in the varnished plug hat; and
+it is nothing to see a conveyance, that ordinarily carries but two
+people, trundling merrily along behind a sprung-kneed nag, with a
+man and several girls piled inside and all waving hands to the crowd
+with the vastest <em>camaraderie</em> imaginable. This is of a piece
+with the universal high spirits and good humor that prevail along the
+boulevards. It is all fun and frolic, and everybody is in it. The rows
+of chairs and tables on the sidewalks before the cafés really make
+the spectators a part of the show; and the groups before the artistic
+little newspaper kiosks and the comfortable sitters on the green
+benches along the curb are, in spite of themselves, part and parcel of
+the big family, with something of the intimacy and allied interest of a
+village street at fair-time. And<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span> it always seems fair-time in Paris by
+night. The profusion of lights that have won it the title of “La Ville
+Lumière” gives it an appearance of being perpetually <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en fête</i>,
+and the ebullient crowds complete the illusion.</p>
+
+<p>But the Grand Boulevards have no monopoly of the night attractiveness
+of the city. All over town stretch broad, clean streets with shade
+trees and double lines of lights and rows of stone and stucco
+houses. In the main these houses resemble each other rather closely;
+slate-colored, Mansard-roofed, and with shallow iron balconies running
+full length of the second, fourth, and fifth stories. By night they
+fairly exhale an atmosphere of tranquillity and peace. There are,
+besides, hundreds of beautiful roomy squares, flooded with light
+and set with comfortable benches that are seldom without contented
+occupants. Such a notable one as the Place de la Concorde is without
+its equal in any city. It costs the three and a quarter millions of
+people who live in and about Paris more than $70,000,000 a year to
+maintain their city’s reputation for beauty; and not a sou of it is
+begrudged. For Paris is the whole world to most of them, and many a
+Parisian politician had rather be Prefect of the Seine and rule this
+town than president of the whole Republic. And with what reason! “It
+is a world-city,” said Goethe, “where the crossing of every bridge or
+every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a
+piece of history has been unfolded.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span></p>
+
+<p>Whoever turns from the boulevards for a space will learn of other kinds
+of life that are in full cry at midnight. What of the studio revelries
+of the Quartier Latin? There abound jollity and earnestness and
+strong friendships with few of the gilded accessories of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Rive
+Droite</i>. The brightest of these scenes are often the most meagre in
+setting. A group of jovial, smoking, singing companions—and about them
+an easel and sketching-board, a dingy divan, a few battered chairs,
+a stove in the corner with the remains of the last meal, a huddle of
+draperies and hangings, fragments of casts and uncompleted sketches on
+the walls, and a corner table piled with a dusty litter of squeezed-out
+paint-tubes, broken brushes, magazine illustrations, a dog-eared book
+or two, and a generous strewing of cigarette butts. The cleanest things
+in sight are a freshly scraped palette and a sheaf of brushes stuck
+in a half-filled jar of water. With so much of equipment your merry,
+care-free artist squeezes the orange of life to its smallest drop, and
+cares not a sou how the whole world wags, provided all is well between
+the Place de l’Observatoire and the Seine.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, were you to pass some pleasant house on a quiet avenue
+where an evening’s party is ending, you could not help but linger under
+the windows in delight to hear some tender song of Massenet’s, some
+soothing <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">berceuse</i> of Ropartz’s, a haunting plaint of Saint-Saëns
+or a vitalizing torrent of Chaminade’s.</p>
+
+<p>And perhaps where you might most expect just such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span> a scene as this,
+behind the closely-drawn window draperies of some handsome apartment,
+there is gathered around a broad green table a group of flushed,
+excited men to whom a hard-eyed <em>croupier</em> is singing the
+abominable siren song of “Faites vos jeux,” “Les jeux sont faits,”
+“Rien ne va plus.” It seems quiet and peaceful enough. You could
+scarcely believe that there hangs above it the shadow of the little
+gray Morgue down behind Notre-Dame!</p>
+
+<p>Before returning to the giddy boulevards for a final <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petit-verre</i>
+and an exchange of pleasantries with café acquaintances, one likes
+to finish a cigar in an aimless ramble through such placid scenes as
+these. Not only may he so indulge the pleasing diversion of speculating
+over the kinds of home life that go on within these houses, but
+incidentally he escapes the tumult of the maelstrom for a few calm
+moments, and eventually sees for himself what a pity it is that so many
+night fascinations should abound in Paris and be enjoyed by so few.
+He may like to draw moral conclusions from the peace-loving pigeons
+nesting in the war-glorifying reliefs of the gigantic and towering Arc
+de Triomphe, or take satisfied note of the monuments of the victories
+of peace that dot the broad avenues that radiate from it. One such
+monument is always under the eyes of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">boulevardiers</i> in the
+form of that most glorious of all temples to music, the Paris Opera
+House. It is especially impressive by night, with the shadows blending<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span>
+columns and statues in bewildering beauty, and high-lights from the
+street lamps glinting on sculptured balustrades and cornices, chalking
+the edges of half-hidden arches and penciling the delicate detail of
+medallions and reliefs. Nor, it must be allowed, are devotees often
+wanting for that fair Greek temple of La Madeleine—so chaste and of
+such imposing dignity, rimmed with giant columns and embowered in
+verdure.</p>
+
+<p>After like fashion does night enhance the beauty of the great, rambling
+Louvre—though this may only be Diana’s way of paying tribute to the
+Arts and of venerating the sacred shrine of a sister divinity, that
+serenest and sublimest of goddesses, the Venus de Milo. There is
+certainly something of almost ethereal comeliness by night to those
+long vistas of columns and arcades, to the shadowy sculptures of the
+pavilions, the lines of graceful caryatids and the blustering triumphal
+groups of the pediments. One might fancy the Louvre wearing a look of
+grave disapproval over the hubbub that drifts in from the boulevards
+were he not aware how carefully it treasures so many pictorial
+skeletons in its own closets. Boucher and Watteau are on record with
+infinitely worse scenes than these. But now it has the appearance of
+some palace capitol of Shadowland; and before it in perfect sympathy
+lies its beautiful dream-kingdom, the hushed and fragrant gardens of
+the Tuileries,—fair as the golden Hesperides,—fresh with fountains,
+silvered in patches with little shining<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span> lakes, marquetried in flowers,
+and peopled with shadowy forms of pallid marble.</p>
+
+<p>From a Seine bridge one notes the wizard liberties the reckless
+moon takes with the colonnaded dome of the sombre Panthéon. And,
+more astonishing still, the magic tricks it plays with the adorned
+and enormous bulk of Notre Dame—now veiling, now revealing massive
+buttress and delicate rose-window, some recessed arch tucked full
+of sculptured saints all snugly foot to head, or a goblin band of
+hideous gargoyles that leer ghoulishly down from out the purple
+haze of the towers. One could well wish, however, for a closer view
+of that exquisite survivor of the Valois kings, the peerless Tour
+Saint-Jacques, at the first sight of which the most indifferent exclaim
+with delight over so rare a vision of grace and lace-like beauty, over
+long slender windows delicately foliated, over traceries of stone
+like petrified festoons, and an ensemble so suggestive of some dainty
+ivory-carving a million times enlarged. With a glimpse of the round
+pointed towers of the dread Conciergerie comes something of the horror
+of the days of the Terror, and one fancies ghastly forms beckoning him
+at the windows with white, frightened faces and hanging hair and eyes
+with hideous rings, and delicate praying hands upheld to passers-by,
+and iron bars clutched by the little white fingers of Marie Antoinette
+and her court.</p>
+
+<p>From such a gruesome fancy it is a relief to turn and look down on
+the dark rippling Seine and watch the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span> wavy ribbons of light swim
+quiveringly out from the bridge lamps. And there in the cool of their
+stone wharves, still panting and perspiring from the violent exertions
+of the earlier evening, lie the fat little open-deck steamers that
+haul the lovers home. For many a happy pair this day has been dining
+deliciously <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à deux</i> under the gay terrace awnings of one or
+another of the romantic, flower-embowered inns that overlook the river
+all the way from Charenton to gray old Argenteuil, where Héloïse in
+her nunnery fought her losing fight against love and the memory of
+Abélard. Some of these steamers appear alarmingly apoplectic, so that
+one wonders how they have managed to wheeze safely under all those low
+arches with the garlanded “N’s” and past so many formidable buttresses
+all sculptured cap-a-pie.</p>
+
+<p>If now you turn and look upward and about you, lo! the heaped
+and cluttered roofs of Paris—the most fantastic and romantic of
+spectacles! It is singular, almost startling, to see how they stare
+down as though to study you, and with apparently as much curious
+intentness and dark suspicion as you do them. There must be whole
+volumes of stories to each of them. Out of the ponderous Mansard
+roofs impudent, leering little dormer windows wink down and squint
+up, each with his rakish peaked roof like a jockey cap over one ear.
+And up above even them are whole groves of blackened chimney-stacks
+leaning all askew, like barricades for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span> <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sansculottes</i>. You look
+expectantly to see miserable white Pierrot come forth, guitar in hand,
+and sing sadly of Colombine to the pallid moon.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, to the right, the lift of a cloud unveils the bronze dome of
+the solemn Hôtel des Invalides, and your heart beats high with thoughts
+of the marvelous man who lies under it among his tattered battle-flags
+on a pavement inscribed with his victories. It is a sobering reflection
+that now in the darkness and stillness of that chamber the only eyes
+that are looking down on his porphyry sarcophagus are those of the
+bronze Christ that hangs on the cross in the little side chapel of the
+tomb.</p>
+
+<p>“Tout-Paris,” as smart society calls itself, spends the early summer at
+Trouville. All the most exclusive names of the two-volume Bottin are
+then inscribed in the hotel registers of this <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">recherché</i> resort,
+nor are their owners to be looked for in town again until long after
+the derbies have reappeared in the hatters’ windows. But while Fashion
+is flirting on the beaches and betting on the little wooden horses of
+the Trouville Casino, what is left at home after “All Paris” has gone
+is quite sufficient to keep the boulevards lively. What walking-space
+remains is eagerly employed by the tens of thousands of visitors. One
+may not, therefore, see the fashionable show of winter, but he finds
+an acceptable substitute in the vivacious summer throngs with their
+perpetual atmosphere of Mardi Gras.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span></p>
+
+<p>As midnight wanes and the multitude waxes, it is amusing to speculate
+upon the scattered sources of the innumerable tiny streams that come
+gradually trickling in. The outlying attractions hold firmly enough up
+to this hour, but the magnet of the boulevards is strongest in the end.</p>
+
+<p>Montmartre, you may be sure, has been up to her old tricks. What
+“La Butte” has to learn about promiscuous entertaining may be
+classed among the negligible quantities. Somewhere in that honeycomb
+of <em>moulins</em>, <em>cabarets</em>, penny-shows, spectacles,
+<em>revues</em>, tiny theatres with sensational rococo façades and cafés
+with fantastic names dedicated to the riotous and the <em>risqué</em>,
+diversion is bound to be forthcoming for any amusement hunter
+<em>blasé</em> with the usual. All the way down from the quaint little
+shops and crooked, cobble-stoned streets of the rustic upper region
+above the Moulin de la Galette to the blazing purlieus of the Place
+de Clichy and the Place Pigalle, there is always something on hand at
+midnight to amaze the neophyte. You may indulge or not, as inclination
+dictates, but you are pretty apt to be astonished, when you look at
+your watch, to see how long you have lingered. French ingenuity has
+lavished itself on every form of “attraction” from vaudeville and
+<em>bals publics</em> to papier-maché establishments devoted to parodies
+of Heaven and Hell. The Boulevard de Clichy is the heart of “La Butte,”
+but the life it pumps along its arteries flows principally from one
+show<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span> to another. You may settle down on a bench under the trees, if
+you like, and resolve to view life only in the open in defiance of
+all the devils rampant in the neighborhood, but presently a flashing
+electric sign shrieks out an overlooked novelty and you find yourself
+saying, “Oh, well, since I am in Paris,” etc., etc., and off you go.</p>
+
+<p>The excuse of being in Paris covers a multitude of sins. To do as the
+Parisians do serves purposes rarely indulged by Parisians themselves.
+It must be because “everything is different here.” The frolicsome party
+in pink stockings who dropped her heel playfully on my bashful friend’s
+shoulder in an aside of the “quadrille” at the Moulin Rouge was merely
+turning one of the tricks that pass as <em>chic</em> on Montmartre. She
+was of the assured and robust type that supports the “pyramid” in
+acrobatic feats, and the effect this had of dazing my friend arose
+rather from astonishment at its unconventionality than delight at
+its skill. This much I gathered when he seized my arm and hurried me
+away and eventually choked out, “Do you know, I have to keep saying
+to myself ‘<em>Mullen, can this be you!</em>’” I think it was quite as
+hard on him at the Jardin de Paris, on the Champs-Élysées, when he
+saw beautifully gowned Paris girls step out of the crowd and go down
+the chutes on their shoulders, screaming with laughter, in a whirl of
+skirts and flash of lingerie. <em>In Paris!</em> What American would
+dream of trying the tricks at home that he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span> accomplishes with the ease
+of an expert on and under the tables of the “Rat Mort” or the Café
+Tabarin? It is a pretty problem as to whether he has saved up a special
+surplus of buoyancy for this city alone, or whether he has become
+infected with the natural high spirits of the Parisians and discovers
+too late that he is unable to control them as they do. The men who want
+“one more fling” before settling down head straight for Paris. It is
+probable if they could not get here that they would dispense with the
+fling altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is the <em>Rive Gauche</em> without its votaries at midnight. If
+the Latin Quarter stands for anything it is for unconventionality and
+comfortable enjoyment. If it is Thursday night the famous Bal Bullier
+is in full blast, and visitors are gazing down from the encircling
+boxes upon a jolly whirl of students in velvet coats and black slouch
+hats cutting fantastic capers in the quadrilles with their latest
+<em>bonnes</em> and pretty models. Mimi and Musette are on the arms of
+Rudolphe and Marcel, “contented with little, happy with more.” Those so
+disposed need not long remain uncompanioned if they take a turn among
+the tables under the trees of the enclosed garden, where from any cozy
+corner a soft voice at any moment may ask you for a cigarette. With so
+auspicious a start there is no reason, if you are that sort, why you
+should not be swearing eternal devotion before you have finished one
+<em>citron glacé</em>.</p>
+
+<p>And no matter what night it is there is the old “Boul’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span> Miche’”
+as always, the resort and delight of artists and students from
+time immemorial. Would you sup, there are cafés, <em>tavernes</em>,
+<em>brasseries</em>, and restaurants of every price and description.
+You can have a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">plat du jour</i> of venerable beef and a quantity
+of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vin ordinaire</i> for the modest outlay of one franc fifty; and
+your payment is received with many a cheery “Merci, monsieur,” and
+“S’il vous plaît,” and hearty “Bon soir,” and all the rest of that
+captivating civility that prevails to the last corner of the city. It
+is perhaps more agreeable to join the few remaining Henri Murger types
+among the crowds on the terraces of the Taverne du Panthéon or the Café
+Soufflot and listen to the vigorous talk that goes on over the little
+glasses of anisette and vermouth. It always seems to be that “hour of
+the apéritif” pronounced by Baudelaire,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“L’heure sainte</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">de l’absinthe.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the flower-women and peddlers become too numerous before
+the café and you are weary with declining nuts and nougats and
+ten-olives-for-two-sous, you may have a look into Les Noctambules
+or some other smoke-laden <em>cabaret</em>. The old-timers will grin
+behind their cigars at your “stung-again” expression when the polite
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">garçon</i> adds to the price of your first refreshment a franc or
+so for the <em>consommation</em> of what was advertised as a free show;
+but shortly you get the run of things and settle down to attend the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chansonnier</i>, who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span> is the ox-eyed gentleman in the long beard who
+strides up to the consumptive piano and pours forth an original and
+impassioned rhapsody to our old friend “Parfait Amour.”</p>
+
+<p>A little of this goes a long ways. When you have politely heard him
+through, you are apt to think better of the boulevards and to start
+bowing your way into the street. How still and deserted the familiar
+places appear where by day is so much life and stir—such bustling
+about of stout market-women in aprons, such racing of delivery-boys
+in white blouses shouldering trays and boxes, such a concourse of the
+little fruit wagons they push and the two-wheeled carts they haul! In
+the little wineshops that dot the side streets one sees the portly
+proprietors in shirt-sleeves behind the shining zinc bars polishing
+glasses and chatting with their patrons, who are workmen in jerseys
+and corduroy trousers and cabmen in glazed hats and whips in hand. The
+loveliness of the Luxembourg Gardens fairly shouts for appreciation.
+One could scarcely linger too long under the chestnuts and sycamores,
+among the puffing fountains, the bronzes and marbles, the beds of
+dahlias and geraniums, the oleanders of the Terrace and the great
+stone urns that drip petunias and purple clematis. As you cross the
+Seine by the old Pont Neuf and lean a moment on its broad balustrade,
+kindly thoughts go out to the garrets that may now be sheltering those
+pathetic stooping figures that bend all day<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span> above the long lines
+of book-shelves along the quays, and never buy, and you wish “good
+luck” to the good-natured book-sellers who never annoy them with
+importunities, but sit indulgently oblivious on the benches opposite
+and smoke their pipes and read their papers. So great a love of books
+will at least insure the old <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">habitués</i> from ever being included
+in that dread toll of two-a-day that the Seine regularly pays into the
+Morgue.</p>
+
+<p>It is like getting home to be back on the boulevards,—gay, gleaming,
+brimming, and confused. The air hums with the incessant shuffle
+of feet on the asphalt sidewalks and the pounding of hoofs on the
+wood-paved streets. The eyes ache with trying to miss none of the
+faces that flash past or any of the good-fellowship that abounds.
+The bubbling current drifts one along by little kiosks all a-flutter
+with magazines and newspapers, by advertising pillars flaming in
+play-bills of many colors, by crowded curb benches, glowing shop
+windows and table-lined café fronts. The wise drop out where the red
+lights mark tobacco <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bureaux</i> and replenish their cigar-supply
+from government boxes with the prices stamped on them, rather than pay
+double for the same article in a restaurant later on. As you proceed
+to your favorite café it is immensely diverting to catch the glimpses
+of good cheer from those you pass. It is the same sort of thing in
+each case and yet somehow always different. On the red divans that
+extend<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span> around the rooms, with mirrors at their backs and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petits
+verres</i> on marble-topped tables before them, one beholds formidable
+arrays of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bons vivants</i>, all taking their ease with as hearty
+a will as the very kings of Yvetot. Military men with red noses
+and white imperials, politicians with pervasive smiles, litterati
+bearded like the Assyrian kings and wearing rosettes of the Legion of
+Honor, fat merchants in fat diamonds, and pot-hatted <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">élégants</i>
+who advertise smart tailors with as much exuberant grace as Roland
+himself. Happily for Paris, champagne is never out of season, and
+popping corks are held by many to make sweeter music than some of the
+orchestras in restaurant corners. The tide of life appears at flood.
+La Belle Ninette, of the Folies, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">très fêtée et très admirée</i>,
+fares daintily on out-of-season delicacies, thanks to the enduring
+ardor of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">distingué</i> Marquis opposite, and drops candied
+fruits with the prettiest air imaginable into the nervous mouth of her
+favorite poodle, who is himself rejoicing in a new silver collar set
+with garnets. <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">La séduisante</i> Gabrielle, at an adjoining table,
+having once been a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">blanchisseuse</i> herself, appropriately excels
+in a toilette of cloudlike gossamer, and is quite the adored of the
+rheumatic old party beside her, who has probably been doting on the
+ballet for two generations. The talk is largely of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">la belle</i> this
+and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">la belle</i> that, of the latest display of extravagance, the
+most recent spectacle, the most promising plays for the fall, or the
+drollest freaks of the new fashions.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span> One sees foreign faces from all
+quarters of the earth, as though it were some kind of international
+congress, with both hemispheres fully represented. Long accustomed
+to seeing the world without leaving home, nothing surprises Paris. A
+Chinese admiral, a Bedouin sheik, a Spitzbergen Eskimo, a lotus-lover
+of Tahiti, a Russian Grand Duke, or a millionaire hemp-grower of
+Yucatan pass practically unremarked. It would be a matter of no comment
+if “the Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green
+boat.” <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’amour</i> is the point of common contact, and even so
+one has little chance against a rich old <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">roué</i> in the eyes of
+a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">première danseuse</i> or a far-visioned <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chanteuse</i> of the
+Marigny. Business flourishes in the cafés. The harried waiters are kept
+bowing right and left and hurry off crying “tout de suite.” Each open
+door sends out its vision of fluttering hands and shrugging shoulders
+and one hears an incessant rapid fire of “Bien!” “Dis donc!” “Écoutez!”
+“Mais non!” “Précisément!” “Allons!” “Oh, là là!”— and so on and on.
+At Maxim’s and the Olympia you would think there was a riot. Ice pails
+are as numerous as pulse-beats.</p>
+
+<p>When you reach your café at last, on the corner by the Opera
+House, perhaps, the ponderous <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">maître d’hôtel</i> assigns you
+a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">garçon</i>, whose name is doubtless François, Gustave, or
+Adolphe, and who is very businesslike in short jacket and white
+apron. To him goes your order for a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">filet de bœuf</i>, or perhaps
+a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fricandeau</i>, or, better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span> still, a sole with shrimp sauce;
+and as you await its preparation you think with satisfaction of the
+self-appreciative observation of Brillat-Savarin, “One eats everywhere;
+one dines only in Paris.”</p>
+
+<p>The life you then see about you is the usual thing here; to a
+stranger, novel and amusing; to a Parisian, altogether important and
+absorbing—an indispensable part of his existence. The setting is of
+soft carpets, palms, red velvet divans, chandeliers, and a crush of
+small, marble-topped tables. The place is crowded to the point of
+discomfort. A thin veil of smoke hangs over all. There are people in
+all kinds of street clothes and evening dress, ladies in opera cloaks
+and gentlemen in immaculate white waistcoats. There are ordinary
+individuals and fantastic “types”; ruddy, portly <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bourgeois</i> who
+shout “mon vieux” at each other and make a prodigious racket generally;
+and nervous old <em>beaux</em> in <em>toupées</em> who fancy themselves in
+drafts. Occupations vary. Ladies are dining on champagne and truffles;
+the man at your elbow is writing a letter; another is looking through
+the illustrated papers; another has called for ink and paper and is
+casting up the day’s expenditures; rubbers of dominoes and écarté are
+being played out; there is a continual running to the telephone-booths
+and you hear the muffled calls of “Allô!”—and all the time an
+orchestra is holding forth in the corner. The clatter of chairs and
+dishes and the confused rattle of conversation is amazing. Wit whets on
+wit. Everybody has an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span> opinion and is anxious to back it. Politicians
+bang their fists on the tables and address one another as “citoyen.”
+Philosophers have it out, Cartesian against Hegelian. Poets quote from
+their latest lyrics and are tremendously applauded. Novelists dispose
+of rival books with a scornful shrug and a withering <em>mot</em>. And
+the playwright, by universal concession, is supreme cock of the walk.</p>
+
+<p>Presently you move a little out of all this and have a seat near the
+outer edge of the terrace, and begin to accumulate a pile of cups and
+saucers each with the price of the order burned in the bottom. So
+far as out of doors goes, you are now the audience and the passing
+crowd the show. The number has dwindled, but in characteristics it
+remains the same—sociable, good-humored, easy in manner, and quick
+in intelligence. It will be seen to differ from the night throngs
+of other cities not only in variety and exuberance, but in dramatic
+qualities as well. <em>Camelots</em> rush up to you crying the latest
+editions of the evening papers, and suddenly, with furtive glances over
+their shoulders, thrust some questionable commodity under your nose
+and protest it is a bargain. Jolly parties sweep along, arm in arm,
+in lines that cross the sidewalk from house to curb. Lady visitors,
+with eyes full of excited delight, pause for a wistful glance down Rue
+de la Paix where the establishments of famed milliners and modistes
+stand in gloom, little dreaming that they may be touching elbows this
+minute with the very <em>chefs des jupes</em>, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">corsagères</i>, and
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">garnisseuses</i> that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span> they are to visit in the morning. <em>Chic</em>
+grisettes trip smilingly by, who have dined frugally at Duval’s on
+chocolate and bread, to have another rose to their corsages. There are
+<em>blasé</em> clubmen from the exclusive <em>cercles</em> of Place de la
+Concorde and the Champs-Élysées, and supercilious representatives of
+the American colony of the Boulevard Haussmann. Here comes D’Artagnan
+himself, capable and alert, arm in arm with blustering Porthos. Ragged
+<em>voyous</em> with shifty looks run to open the carriage doors. From
+time to time there saunters by in cap and cape that model policeman,
+the affable and accommodating <em>sergent de ville</em>, and if you
+look around for a <em>camelot</em> then, you will find him attending
+very strictly to business. And so the fascinating procession troops
+merrily by: roaring students from the Boul’ Miche’, black-eyed
+soldiers in shakos and baggy red trousers, members of the Institute,
+pretty working-girls who handle their skirts with the captivating
+grace of <em>comediennes</em>, the shapely dress-models they nickname
+“quails,” conceited <em>figurantes</em> from the <em>cafés-concerts</em>,
+famous models, <em>cocottes</em>,—frail daughters of Lutetia,—with
+complexions like Italian sunsets, impudent <em>gamins</em> chattering in
+unintelligible <em>argot</em>, <em>dilettanti</em>, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">poseurs</i>, and the
+usual concomitants of beggars and thieves. What a jumble of happiness
+and misery! What an amazing spectacle, with the shimmer of silks and
+the glint of pearl ranged beside the mendicant in his rags!</p>
+
+<p>What a wealth of material, too, for the capable! One<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span> sees how Balzac
+found the best types of his “Human Comedy” on the boulevards; why
+Victor Hugo tramped them day and night and read shop signs by the hour
+in search for characters and the names to fit them; where Zola got the
+misery that he put between covers; where Molière secured impressions
+that he transplanted so effectually to the stage. How Dumas must have
+known these streets! And Flaubert and De Maupassant! Nor are they
+exhausted yet; or ever will be. Where the entire gamut of the emotions
+is so incessantly run as here, vital, human material can never be
+lacking.</p>
+
+<p>As one o’clock wears round, it is easy to distinguish a change in the
+appearance of the crowd.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“The tumult and the shouting dies,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The captains and the kings depart.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Something of that wan and forlorn look is beginning to appear that
+makes even these buildings themselves seem dejected and remorseful, by
+the time the street cleaners advance to flood the boulevards and the
+sky beyond Père-Lachaise is paling to dawn. The heart says, “Let’s keep
+it up”; the body says, “To bed.” And now, too, the crasser comedies of
+the fag end of the night receive their <em>premières</em>. Amaryllis has
+lost her Colin and laments loudly with Florian:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“C’est mon ami,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Rendez-le moi;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">J’ai son amour,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Il a ma foi.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span></p>
+<p>Mlle. Fifi demands her carriage and bundles out into it, with the
+red-faced Baron hurrying after, carrying her amazing hat; and off
+they go toward the Champs-Élysées. A stag party of revelers hails a
+victoria and sinks limply onto its cushions; and they, too, head for
+the Champs-Élysées with one hanging onto the <em>cocher</em> and reciting
+dramatically:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Au clair de la lune,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Mon ami Pierrot.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Everyone smiles, for they know whither, they are bound. For Pré
+Catelon, of course, in the Bois de Boulogne, where they will chase the
+ducks and chickens around the little farmyard and make speeches to the
+mild-eyed cows and recover themselves gradually on mugs of cold milk.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, it is time to depart. One does not want the lees of this
+sparkling cup. A man is a fool to abuse his pleasures—though this
+may sound naïve at one o’clock in the morning. Go, while everything
+is still charming and delightful. The seasoned <em>boulevardier</em>
+can do it, for he has a viewpoint that is all his own; it is by no
+means that of France, nor yet that of Paris by day, but of Paris by
+night—<em>his</em> Paris. It is opportunism applied to society. Not
+the mad, reckless <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">après-moi-le-déluge</i> folly rout of the late
+Louises, but rather a conception of the importance of few things and
+the inconsequence of many. He sings with Villon: “Where are the snows
+of yester-year?” He searches the classics,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span> and has “Carpe Diem”
+framed. He skims Holy Writ and puts his finger on “Sufficient unto the
+day is the evil thereof.” “Life is poetry,” quoth he, “in spite of
+a limping line here and there! Why fuss over Waterloo, or the Place
+de Grève, or the guillotine, or the tumbrils that rattled up the Rue
+Royale? The present alone is ours; enjoy it to the uttermost! Life
+is beautiful and of the moment. Lights are sparkling. Fountains are
+splashing. The night is delicious with fragrance and enchanting with
+music and laughter. Join me!” he cries. “I raise my glass: <em>To the
+lilies of France and the Bright Eyes of the Daughters of Paris!</em>”</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="p2"></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="gothic">The Riverside Press</span></p>
+<p class="center">CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS</p>
+<p class="center">U. S. A.</p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROUND THE CLOCK IN EUROPE ***</div>
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author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-19 18:11:55 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-19 18:11:55 -0800
commit	1be640c6d89e841a6ff1b2b40d80bcf86990828b (patch)
tree	391ae3328ab62d3db943510da7b0c794e8b9acb0