 3. Men on the Bumble, Chapter 5 A story is told of a Scotchman, who, loving Alassi, desired her for his wife. But he possessed the prudence of his race. He had noticed in his circle many an otherwise promising union, but in disappointment and dismay, purely in consequence of the false estimate formed by Bride or Bridegroom concerning the imagined perfectability of the other, he determined that in his own case no collapsed ideal should be possible. Therefore it was that his proposal took the following form. I am but a poor lad, Jenny. I had nay silver to offer ye, and nay land. Ah, but ye hay yourself, Davy. And I'm wishful. It were anything else, Alassi. I'm nay but a poor ill-seasoned loon, Jenny. Now, now, there's money a lad mow'ry looking than yourself, Davy. I had nay seen him last, and I'm just a thinkin' I should no care to. Better a plain man, Davy, that ye can depend on, than ain't that would be a sparing at the lassies, a bringin' trouble into the home, with his floutin' ways. Dinner ye reckon on that, Jenny. It's nay the bonniest bubbly jock that makes the most feathers to fly in the kale-yard. I was ever a lad to run after the pettigots, as his wheel kent, and it's a weary handful I beat to ye, I'm thinkin'. Ah, but ye hay a kind heart, Davy, and ye love me well. I'm sure on it. I like ye well, in all, Jenny, though I cannot see how long the feeling may bide with me, and I'm kind in all when I have my own way, and nothing happens to put me out. But I hear the devil's aim temper, as my mother can tell ye, and like my poor father, I'm a thinkin' I'll grow nay better as I grow my old. Ah, but you sir hard upon yourself, Davy. You're an honest lad. I can you better than you can yourself, and you'll make a good aim for me. Be, Jenny, but I hammer doubts. It's a rare thing for wife and barons, when the good man can I keep away from the glass, and when the scent of the whisky comes to me, it's just as though I hay the throat of a locked-tay salmon. It's just gays dune and dune, and there's nay filling on me. Ah, but you're a good man when you're sober, Davy. Maybe I'll be that, Jenny, if I'm nay disturbed. And you'll bide with me, Davy, and work for me? I see nay reason why I shouldn't bide with you, Jenny, but didn't hear a clack about work to me, for I just cannot bear the thought of it. Anyhow you'll do your best, Davy, as the Minister says, nay man can do mere than that. And it's a poor best that mine'll be, Jenny, and I'm nay so sure you'll hay all muckle you and that. We're all weak, sinful creatures, Jenny, and you'd hay some difficulty to find a man weaker or mere sinful than myself. Well, well, ye hay a truth for tongue, Davy. Money allowed will make fine promises to a poor lassie, only to break them, and her heart, William. You speak me fair, Davy, and I'm thinking I'll just take you, and see what comes out. Concerning what did come of it, the story is silent, but one feels that under no circumstances had the Lady any right to complain of her bargain, whether she ever did, or did not, or women do not invariably order their tongues according to logic, nor men either for the matter of that. Davy himself must have had the satisfaction of reflecting that all approaches were undeserved. I wish to be equally frank with the reader of this book. I wish here conscientiously to let forth its shortcomings. I wish no one to read this book under a misapprehension. There will be no useful information in this book. Anyone who should think that, with the aid of this book, he would be able to make a tour through Germany and the Black Forest, would probably lose himself before he got to the North. That, at all events, would be the best thing that could happen to him. The farther away from home he got, the greater only would be his difficulties. I do not regard the conveyance of useful information as my forte. This belief was not inborn with me. It has been driven home upon me by experience. In my early journalistic days I served upon a paper, the forerunner of many very popular periodicals of the present day. Our boast was that we combined instruction with amusement. As to what should be regarded as affording amusement and what instruction, the reader judged for himself. We gave advice to people about to marry. Long earnest advice, that would, had they followed it, have made our circle of readers the envy of the whole married world. We told our subscribers how to make fortunes by keeping rabbits, giving facts and figures. The thing that must have surprised them was that we ourselves did not give up journalism and start rabbit farming. Often and often, have I proved conclusively from authoritative sources, how a man starting a rabbit farm with twelve selected rabbits and a little judgment must, at the end of three years, be in receipt of an income of two thousand a year, rising rapidly. He simply could not help himself. He might not want the money. He might not know what to do with it, when he had it. But there it was for him. I have never met a rabbit farmer myself, worth two thousand a year, though I have known many, start with the twelve necessary assorted rabbits. Something has always gone wrong somewhere. Maybe the continued atmosphere of a rabbit farm saps the judgment. We told our readers how many bald-headed men there were in Iceland, and for all we knew, our figures may have been correct. How many red herrings placed tail-to-mouth it would take to reach from London to Rome, which must have been useful to anyone desirous of laying down a line of red herrings from London to Rome, enabling him to order in the right quantia to the beginning? How many words the average woman spoke in a day, and other such-like items of information, calculated to make them wise and great beyond the readers of other journals? We told them how to cure fits in cats. Personally I do not believe, and I did not believe then, that you can cure fits in cats. If I had a cat subject to fits, I should advertise it for sale, or even give it away. But our duty was to supply information when asked for. Some fool wrote, clamouring to know, and I spent the best part of the morning seeking knowledge on the subject. I found what I wanted at length at the end of an old cookery book. What it was doing there I have never been able to understand. It had nothing to do with the proper subject of the book, whatever. There was no suggestion that you could make anything savoury out of a cat, even when you had cured it of its fits. The authoress had just thrown in this paragraph out of pure generosity. I can only say that I wish she had left it out. It was the cause of a deal of angry correspondence, and of the loss of four subscribers to the paper, if not more. The man said the result of following our advice had been two pounds worth of damage to his kitchen crockery, to say nothing of a broken window and probable blood poisoning to himself, added to which the cat's fits were worse than before, and yet it was a simple enough recipe. You held the cat between your legs, gently so as not to hurt it, and with a pair of scissors made a sharp, clean cut in its tail. You did not cut off any part of the tail. You were to be careful not to do that. You only made an incision. As we explained to the man, the garden or the cold cellar would have been the proper place for the operation. No one but an idiot would have attempted to perform it in a kitchen, and without help. We gave them hints on etiquette. We told them how to address peers and bishops. Also, how to eat soup. We instructed shy young men how to acquire easy grace in drawing rooms. We taught dancing to both sexes by the aid of diagrams. We solved their religious doubts for them, and supplied them with a code of morals that would have done credit to a stained-glassed window. The paper was not a financial success. It was some years before its time, and the consequence was that our staff was limited. My own apartment, I remember, included advice to mothers. I wrote that with the assistance of my landlady, who, having divorced one husband and buried four children, was, I considered, a reliable authority on all domestic matters. Hints on furnishing and household decorations with designs. A column of literary counsel to beginners. I sincerely hope my guidance was of better service to them than it has ever proved to myself. And our weekly article, Straight Talks to Young Men, signed Uncle Henry. A kindly, genial old fellow was Uncle Henry, with wide and varied experience and a sympathetic attitude towards the rising generation. He had been through trouble himself in his far-back youth, and knew most things. Even to this day I read of Uncle Henry's advice, and though I say it who should not, it still seems to me good sound advice. I often think that, had I followed Uncle Henry's counsel closer, I would have been wiser, made fewer mistakes, felt better satisfied with myself than is now the case. A quiet, weary little woman who lived in a bed-sitting room off the Tottenham Court Road, and who had a husband in a lunatic asylum, did our cooking column. Hints on education. We were full of hints. And a page and a half of fashionable intelligence, written in the pertly personal style, which even yet has not altogether disappeared, so I am informed, from modern journalism. I must tell you about the divine frock I wore at Glorious Goodwood last week. Prince C., but there I really must not repeat all the things the silly fellow says. He is too foolish. And the dear Countess, I fancy, was just the weish bit jealous. And so on. Poor little woman, I see her now in the shabby grey alpaca with the ink-stains on it. Perhaps a day at Glorious Goodwood, or anywhere else in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her cheeks. Our proprietor, one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I have ever met, I remember his gravely and formier correspondent once that Ben Johnson had written at Rabelais to pay for his mother's funeral, and only laughing good and naturedly when his mistakes were pointed out to him, wrote with the aid of a cheap encyclopedia, the pages devoted to general information, and did them on the whole remarkably well, while our office boy, with an excellent pair of scissors for his assistant, was responsible for our supply of wit and humour. It was hard work, and the pay was poor. What sustained us was the consciousness that we were instructing and improving our fellow men and women. Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally popular is the game of school. You collect six children and put them on a doorstep while you walk up and down with the book and cane. We play it when babies, we play it when boys and girls, we play it when men and women, we play it as lean and slippered, we totter towards the grave. It never pulls upon, it never worries us. Only one thing marrs it, the tendency of one and all of the other six children to clamour for their turn with the book and the cane. The reason I am sure that journalism is so popular and recalling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this, each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The government, the classes, the masses, society, art and literature are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and improves them. But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I recall to these matters. Let us now return. Somebody signing himself balloonist had written to ask concerning the manufacture of hydrogen gas. It is an easy thing to manufacture, at least so I gathered after reading up the subject at the British Museum. Yet I did warn balloonist whoever he might be to take all necessary precaution against accident. What more could I have done? Ten days afterwards a florid faced lady called at the office, leading by the hand what she explained was her son, aged twelve. The boy's face was unimpressive to a degree positively remarkable. His mother pushed him forward and took off his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this. He had no eyebrows whatever, and off his hair nothing remained but a scrubby dust, giving to his head the appearance of a hard-boiled egg, skinned and sprinkled with black pepper. That was a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally curly hair, remarked the lady. She spoke with a rising inflection, suggestive of the beginning of things. What has happened to him? asked our chief. This is what's happened to him? retorted the lady. She drew from her muff a copy of our last week's issue with my article on hydrogen gas, scored in pencil, and flung it before his eyes. Our chief took it and read it through. He was balloonist, queried the chief. He was balloonist, admitted the lady, the poor innocent child, and now look at him. Maybe it'll grow again, suggested our chief. Maybe it will, retorted the lady, her key continuing to rise, and maybe it won't. What I wanted to know is what you are going to do for him. Our chief suggested a hair-wash. I thought at first she was going to fly at him, but for the moment she confined herself to words. It appears she was not thinking of a hair-wash, but of compensation. She also made observations on the general character of our paper, its utility, its claim to public support, the sense and wisdom of its contributors. I really don't see that it is our fault, urged the chief. He was a mild-mannered man. He asked for information, and he got it. Don't you try to be funny about it? said the lady. He had not meant to be funny, I'm sure. Levity was not his failing. Or you'll get something that you haven't asked for. Why, for two pins? said the lady, with a suddenness that sent us both flying like scuttled chickens behind our respective chairs. I'd come round her to make your head like it. I take it, she meant like the boys. She also added observations upon our chief's personal appearance that were distinctly in bad taste. She was not a nice woman by any means. Myself, I am of opinion, that had she brought the action she threatened, she would have had no case, but our chief was a man who had had experience of the law, and his principle was always to avoid it. I have heard him say, if a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply. He squared the matter with the florid-faced lady for a five-pound note, which must have represented a month's profits on the paper, and she departed, taking her damaged offspring with her. After she was gone, our chief spoke kindly to me. He said, Don't think I'm blaming you in the least. It is not your fault, it is fate. Keep to moral advice and criticism. There you are distinctly good, but don't try your hand any more on useful information. As I have said, it is not your fault. Your information is correct enough. There is nothing to be said against that. It simply is that you are not lucky with it. I would that I had followed his advice always. I would have saved myself and other people much disaster. I see no reason why it should be, but so it is, if I instruct a man as to the best route between London and Rome, he loses his luggage in Switzerland, or his nearly shipwrecked off Dover. If I counsel him in the purchase of a camera, he gets run in by the German police for photographing fortresses. I once took a deal of trouble to explain to a man how to marry his deceased wife's sister at Stockholm. I found out for him the time the boat left Hull and the best hotels to stop at. There was not a single mistake from beginning to end in the information with which I supplied him. No hitch occurred anywhere, yet now he never speaks to me. Therefore it is that I have come to restrain my passion for the giving of information. Therefore it is that nothing in the nature of practical instruction will be found if I can help it within these pages. There will be no description of towns, no historical reminiscences, no architecture, no morals. I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London. He said it is a very big town. I said what struck you most about it? He replied the people. I said compared with other towns Paris, Rome, Berlin, what did you think of it? He shrugged his shoulders. It is bigger. He said what more can one say? One until is very much like another. So many avenues, wide or narrow, where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion. These bustling by important. These halting to power with one another. These struggling with big burdens. Those but basking in the sun. So many granaries stored with food. So many cells where the little things sleep and eat and love. The corner where lie their little white bones. This hive is larger, the next smaller. This nest lies on the sand and another under the stones. This was built but yesterday while that was fashioned ages ago. Some say even before the swallows came. Who knows? Nor will there be found herein folklore or story. Every valley where lie homesteads has its song. I will tell you the plot. You can turn it into verse and set it to music of your own. There lived a lass and there came a lad who loved and rode away. It is a monotonous song, written in many languages, for the young man seems to have been a mighty traveller. Here in sentimental Germany they remember him well. So also the dwellers of the blue Alsatian mountains remember his coming among them. While if my memory serves me truly he likewise visited the banks of Alan Water. A veritable wandering Jew is he, for still the foolish girls listen, so they say, to the dying away of his hoofbeats. In this land of many ruins, that long while ago were voice filled homes, linger many legends, and here again, giving you the essentials, I leave you to cook the dish for yourself. Take a human heart or two, assorted, a bundle of human passions. There are not many of them, half a dozen at the most. Season with a mixture of good and evil, flavour the whole with the source of death, and serve up where and when you will. The saints sell, the haunted keep, the dungeon grave, the lovers leap, call it what you will, the stews the same. Lastly, in this book there will be no scenery. This is not laziness on my part, it is self-control. Nothing is easier to write than scenery, nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read. When Gibbon had to trust to traveller's tales for a description of the helispont, and the Rhine was chiefly familiar to English students through the medium of Caesar's cometeries, it behoved every globe trotter, for whatever distance, to describe to the best of his ability the things that he had seen. Dr. Johnson, familiar with little Elston the view down Fleet Street, read the description of a Yorkshire moor with pleasure and with profit. To a cockney who had never seen higher ground than the hogs back in Surrey, an account of Snowden must have appeared exciting, that we, or rather the steam engine and the camera for us, have changed all that. The man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the Matterhorn, and billiards on the summit of the Regi, does not thank you for an elaborate and painstaking description of the Grampian Hills. To the average man who has seen a dozen oil paintings, a hundred photographs, a thousand pictures in the illustrated journals, and a couple of panoramas of Niagara, the word painting of a waterfall is tedious. An American friend of mine, a cultured gentleman who loved Pertry well enough for its own sake, told me that he had obtained a more correct and more satisfying idea of the Lake District from an 18-penny book of photographic views than from all the works of Coleridge, Sothe and Wordsworth put together. I also remember his saying concerning this subject of scenery in literature, that he would thank an author as much for writing an eloquent description of what he had just had for dinner, but this was in reference to another argument, namely the proper province of each art. My friend maintained that just as canvas and colour were the wrong poems for storytelling, so word painting was at its best but a clumsy method of conveying impressions that could much better be received through the eye. As regards the question, there also lingers in my memory very distinctly a hot school afternoon. The class was for English literature, and the proceedings commenced with the reading of a certain lengthy but otherwise unobjectionable poem. The author's name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten, together with the title of the poem. The reading finished, we closed our books, and the Professor, a kindly white-haired old gentleman, suggested our giving in our own words, an account of what we had just read. Tell me," said the Professor encouragingly, what it is all about. Please, sir," said the first boy, he spoke with bowed head and evident reluctance, as though the subject were one which, left to himself, he would never have mentioned. It is about a maiden. Yes," agreed the Professor, but I want you to tell me in your own words. We do not speak of a maiden, you know. We say a girl. Yes, it is about a girl. Go on." A girl," repeated the top boy, the substitution apparently increasing his embarrassment, who lived in a wood. What sort of a wood? asked the Professor. The first boy examined his ink pot carefully, and then looked at the wood. Come," urged the Professor, growing impatient. You have been reading about this wood for the last ten minutes. Surely you can tell me something concerning it. The gnarly trees, their twisted branches, recommenced the top boy. No, no," interrupted the Professor. I do not want you to repeat the poem. I want you to tell me, in your own words, what sort of a wood it was where the girl lived. The Professor tapped his foot and the top boy made a dash for it. Please, sir, it was the usual sort of a wood. Tell him what sort of a wood," said he, pointing to the second lad. The second boy said it was a green wood. Disannoyed the Professor still more, he called the second boy a blockhead, though really I cannot see why, and passed on to the third, who, for the last minute, had been sitting apparently on hot plates, with his right hand waving up and down like a signal. He would have had to say it the next second, whether the Professor had asked him or not. He was red in the face, holding his knowledge in. A dark and gloomy wood, shouted the third boy with much relief to his feelings. A dark and gloomy wood, repeated the Professor with evident approval, and why was it dark and gloomy? The third boy was still equal to the occasion, because the son could not get inside it. The Professor felt he had discovered the class, because the son could not get into it, or better, because the son beams could not penetrate, and why could not the son beams penetrate there? Please, sir, because the leaves were too thick. Very well, said the Professor. The girl lived in a dark and gloomy wood, through the leafy canopy of which the son beams were unable to pierce. Now, what grew in this wood? He pointed to the fourth boy. Please, sir, trees, sir. And what else? Toadstools, sir. This after a pause. The Professor was not quite sure about the toadstools, but on referring to the text he found that the boy was right. Toadstools had been mentioned. Quite right, admitted the Professor. Toadstools grew there. And what else? What do you find underneath trees in a wood? Please, sir, earth, sir. No, no. What grows in a wood besides trees? No, please, sir. Bushes, sir. Bushes. Very good. Now we are getting on. In this wood there were trees and bushes. And what else? He pointed to a small boy near the bottom, who, having decided that the wood was too far off to be of any annoyance to him individually, was occupying his leisure, playing noughts and crosses against himself, vexed and bewildered, but feeling it necessary to add something to the inventory, he hazarded black merries. This was a mistake. Black merries. Of course, Klobstock would think of something to eat, commented the Professor, who prided himself on his ready wit. This raised a laugh against Klobstock, and pleased the Professor. You, continued he, pointing to a boy in the middle, what else was there in this wood besides trees and bushes? Please, sir, there was a torrent there. Quite right. And what did the torrent do? Please, sir, it gurgled. No, no. Streams gurgled. Torrents. Raw, sir. It roared. And what made it roar? This was a poser. One boy, he was not our prize intellect, I admit, suggested the girl, to help us the Professor put his question in another form. When did it roar? Our third boy, again coming to the rescue, explained that it roared when it fell down among the rocks. I think some of us had a vague idea that it must have been a cowardly torrent to make such a noise about a little thing like this. A plucky a torrent we felt would have got up and gone on saying nothing about it. A torrent that roared every time it fell upon a rock we deemed a poor spirited torrent, but the Professor seemed quite content with it. And what lived in this wood beside the girl was the next question. Please, sir, birds, sir. Yes, birds lived in this wood. Birds seemed to have exhausted our ideas. Come, said the Professor, what are those animals with tails that run up trees? We thought for a while, and one of us suggested cats. This was an error. The poet had said nothing about cats. Squirrels was what the Professor was trying to get. I do not recall much more about this wood in detail. I only recollect that the sky was introduced into it, in places where there occurred an opening among the trees. You could, by looking up, see the sky above you. Very often there were clouds in this sky, and occasionally, if I remember rightly, the girl got wet. I have dwelt upon this incident because it seems to me suggestive of the whole question of scenery in literature. I could not at the time, I cannot now, understand why the Top Boys summary was not sufficient. With all due deference to the poet, whoever he may have been, one cannot but acknowledge that his wood was, and could not be otherwise then, the usual sort of a wood. I could describe the black forest to you at great length. I could translate to you, Hebel, the poet of the black forest. I could write pages concerning its rocky gorges and its smiling valleys, its pine-clad slopes, its rock-crowned summits, its foaming rivulets, where the tidy German has not condemned them to flow respectively through wooden troughs or drain-pipes, its white villages, its lonely farmsteads. But I am haunted by the suspicion you might skip all this. Were you sufficiently conscientious or weak-minded enough not to do so? I should, all said and done, succeed in conveying to you only an impression much better summed up in the simple words of the pretentious guidebook. A picturesque mountain district bounded on the south and the west by the plain of the Rhine towards which its spurs descend precipitately. Its geological formation consists chiefly of variegated sandstone and granite, its lower heights being covered with extensive pine forests. It is well watered with numerous streams while its populous valleys are vile and well cultivated. The inns are good, but the local wines should be partaken of by the stranger with discretion. It is not the most direct route. I can only account for our visit to Hanover as the nigger accounted to the magistrate for his appearance in the deacon's paltry-yard. Well... Yes, sir. What the constable says is quite true, sir. I was darser. Oh, so you admit it. And what were you doing with a sack-prey in deacon Abraham's paltry-yard at twelve o'clock at night? I's going to tell you, sir. Yes, sir. I've been to Massa Jordan's with the sack-of-melons. Yes, sir. And Massa Jordan, he was very agreeable, and asked me for to come in. Yes, sir. Very agreeable man is Massa Jordan. And there we sat a-talking and a-talking. Very likely. What we wanted to know is what you were doing in the deacon's paltry-yard. Yes, sir. That's what I've come into. It was very late for our left Massa Jordan's. And then I says to myself, says I, now you just step out with your best leg for most eulises, case you gets into trouble with the old woman. Very talkative woman she is, sir. Very. Yes, never mind her. There are other people very talkative in this town besides your wife. Deacon Abraham's house is half a mile out of your way home from Mr. Jordan's. How did you get there? That's what I'm going to explain, sir. I am glad of that. And how do you propose to do it? Well, I's thinking, sir. I must digressed. I take it we digressed a little. At first, from some reason or other, Hanover strikes you as an uninteresting town, but it grows upon you. It is in reality two towns, a place of broad, modern, handsome streets and tasteful gardens, side-by-side with a sixteenth-century town where old, timbered houses overhang the narrow lanes, where through low archways one catches glimpses of galleried courtyards, once often thronged, no doubt, with troops of horse or locked with lumbering coach and six waiting its rich merchant-owner and his fat placid frow. But where now, children and Americans scuttle at their will while over the carved balconies hang dingy clothes the drying. A singularly English atmosphere hovers over Hanover, especially on Sundays, when its shuttered shops and clanging bells give to it the suggestion of a sunnier London. Nor was this British Sunday atmosphere apparent only to myself, else I might have attributed it to imagination. Even George felt it. Harris and I, coming from a short stroll with our cigars after lunch on the Sunday afternoon, found him peacefully slumbering in the smoke-room's easiest chair. After all, said Harris, there is something about the British Sunday that appeals to the man with English blood in his veins. I should be sorry to see it all together done away with, let the new generation say what it will, and taking one each end of the ample settee we kept George to Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German. The disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small province, nobody understands this best German. Thus you have to decide whether to speak good German and Romanian Hanover or bad German and travel about. Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen principalities is unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects. Students from Poison, wishful to converse with men of Wurtenberg, have to talk as often as not in French or English, and young ladies who have received an expensive education in Westphalia surprise and disappoint their parents by being unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg. An English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds or in the early years of Whitechapel. But the cases are not on all fours. Throughout Germany, it is not only in the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are maintained. Every province has practically its own language, of which it is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will admit to you that, academically speaking, the North German is more correct, but he will continue to speak South German language to his children. In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany will solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English. Every boy and girl in Germany above the peasant class speaks English. Were English pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not the slightest doubt, but that in the course of a very few years comparatively speaking it would become the language of the world. All foreigners agree the easiest language of any to learn. A German comparing it with his own language, where every word in every sentence is governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that English has no grammar. A good many English people would seem to have come to the same conclusion, but they are wrong. As a matter of fact there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children, but at present we appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity neglectable. English pronunciation is the stumbling block to our progress. English spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on the part of the foreigner, but for that he would learn it in a year. For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany and not our way, and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the gymnasium or high school at fifteen, it as in Germany one conveniently may say, can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning. In England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps unequaled. An English boy who has been through a good middle-class in England can talk to a Frenchman slowly and with difficulty about female gardeners and aunts. Conversation which to a man possessed perhaps of neither is liable to Paul. Possibly if he be a bright exception he may be able to tell the time or make a few guarded observations concerning the weather. No doubt he could repeat a goodly number of irregular verbs by heart only as a matter of fact few foreigners care to listen to their own irregular verbs recited by young Englishmen. Likewise he might be able to remember a choice selection of grotesquely involved French idioms such as no modern Frenchman has ever heard or understands when he does hear. The explanation is that in nine cases out of ten he has learnt French from an aunts first course. The history of this famous work is remarkable and instructive. The book was originally written for a joke by a witty Frenchman who had resided for some years in England. He intended it as a satire upon the conversational powers of British society. From this point of view it was distinctly good. He submitted it to a London publishing firm. The manager was a shrewd man. He read the book through then he sent for the author. This book of yours says he to the author. It's very clever. I have laughed over it myself till the tears came. I am delighted to hear you say so. replied the pleased Frenchman. I tried to be truthful without being unnecessarily offensive. It is most amusing concurred the manager. And yet published as a harmless joke I feel it would fail. The author's face fell. Its humour preceded the manager would be denounced as forced and extravagant. It would amuse the thoughtful and intelligent but from a business point of view the public are never worth considering. But I have an idea. continued the manager. He glanced round the room to be sure they were alone and leaning forward sunk his voice to a whisper. My notion is to publish it as a serious work for the use of schools. The author stared speechless. I know the English schoolman said the manager. This book will appeal to him. It will exactly fit in with his method. Nothing's sillier. This for the purpose will he ever discover. He will smack his lips over the book as a puppy licks up blacking. The author sacrificing art to greed consented. They altered the title and added a vocabulary but left the book otherwise as it was. The result is known to every schoolboy. Arne became the palladium of English philological education. If it no longer retains its ubiquity it is because even less adaptable to the object in view has been since invented. Lest in spite of all the British schoolboy should obtain even from the like of Arne some glimmering of French the British educational method further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the assistance of what is termed in the prospectus a native gentleman. This native French gentleman who by the way is generally a Belgian is no doubt a most worthy person and can it is true understand and speak his own language with tolerable fluency. There his qualifications cease. Invariably he is a man with a quite remarkable inability to teach anybody anything. Indeed he would seem to be chosen not so much as an instructor as an amuser of youth. He is always a comic figure. No Frenchman of a dignified appearance would be engaged for any English school. If he possessed by nature a few harmless peculiarities calculated to cause merriment so much the more is he esteemed by his employers. The class naturally regards him as an animated joke. The two to four hours a week that are deliberately wasted on this ancient farce are looked forward to by the boys as a merry interlude in an otherwise monotonous existence. And then when the proud parent takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely to discover that the lad does not know enough to call a cab he abuses not the system but its innocent victim. I confine my remarks to French because that is the only language we attempt to teach our youth. An English boy who could speak German would be looked down upon as unpatriotic. Why we waste time in teaching even French according to this method I have never been able to understand. This great unacquaintance with a language is respectable but putting aside comic journalists and lady novelists for whom it is a business necessity this smattering of French which we are so proud to possess only serves to render us ridiculous. In the German school the method is somewhat different one hour every day is devoted to the same language. The idea is not to give the lad time between each lesson but what he learnt at the last. The idea is for him to get on there is no comic foreigner provided for his amusement. The desired language is taught by a German schoolmaster who knows it inside and out as thoroughly as he knows his own. Maybe this system does not provide to the German youth with that perfection of foreign accent for which the British tourist is in every land remarkable but it has other advantages. The boy does not call his master or sausage nor prepare for the French or English hour any exhibition of homely wit whatever he just sits there and for his own sake tries to learn that foreign tongue with as little trouble to everybody concerned as possible when he has left school he can talk not about pen knives and gardeners and aunts merely but about European politics history, Shakespeare or the musical glasses according to the turn the conversation may take Viewing the German people from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint it may be that in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them but on the other hand there is much that we might learn from them and in the matter of common sense as applied to education they can give us 99 in 100 and beat us with one hand the beautiful wood of the island leader bounds Hanover on the south and west and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a prominent part we were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday afternoon in the company of many other cyclists for it is a favourite resort with the Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon and its shady pathways are then filled with happy, thoughtless folk among them rode a young and beautiful girl on a machine that was new she was evidently a novice on the bicycle one felt instinctively that there would come a moment when she would require help and Harris with his accustomed chivalry suggested we should keep near her Harris as he occasionally explains to George and to myself has daughters of his own or to speak more correctly a daughter who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising Catherine wheels in the front garden and will grow up into a beautiful and respectable young lady this naturally gives Harris all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts they remind him so he says of home we had ridden for about two miles when we noticed a little ahead of us in a space where five ways met a man with a hose watering the roads the pipe supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels writhed after him as he moved suggesting a gigantic worm from whose open neck as the man gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it now this way and now that, now elevating it now depressing it poured a strong stream of water at the rate of about a gallon a second what a much better method than ours! observed Harris enthusiastically Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on all British institutions how much simpler, quicker and more economical you see one man by this method can in five minutes water a stretch of road and thus with our clumsy lumbering cart half an hour to cover George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said yes, and it is also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could cover a good many people in a good deal less time than they could get out of the way George, the opposite to Harris is British to the core I remember George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting the introduction it is so much neater, said Harris I don't care if it is, said George I'm an Englishman hanging is good enough for me our water-cart may have its disadvantages continued to George but it can only make you uncomfortable about the legs and you can avoid it this is the sort of machine with which a man can follow you around the corner and upstairs it fascinates me to watch them, said Harris they are so skillful I have seen a man from the corner of a crowded square in Strasbourg cover every inch of ground and not so much as wet an apron string it is marvellous how they judge their distance they will send the water up to your toes and then bring it over your head so that it falls around your heels they can ease up a minute, said George I said, why? he said, I'm going to get off and watch the rest of this show from behind a tree there may be great performers in this line as Harris says this particular artist appears to me to lack something he has just sourced a dog and now he's busy watering a signpost I'm going to wait till he has finished nonsense, said Harris he won't wet you that is precisely what I'm going to make sure of answered George saying which he jumped off and taking up a position behind a remarkably fine elm pulled out and commenced filling his pipe I did not care to take the tandem on by myself so I stepped off and joined him leaving the machine against the tree Harris shouted something or other about our being a disgrace to the land that gave us birth and rode on the next moment I heard a woman's cry of distress glancing round to the stem of the tree I perceived that it proceeded from the young and elegant lady before mentioned whom in our interest concerning the road-waterer we had forgotten was riding her machine steadily and straightly through a drenching shower of water from the hose she appeared to be too paralyzed either to get off or turn her wheel aside every instant she was becoming wetter while the man with the hose who was either drunk or blind continued to pour water upon her with utter indifference a dozen voices yelled implications upon him but he took no heed whatever the fatherly nature stirred to its depths did at this point what under the circumstances was quite the right and proper thing to do had he acted throughout with the same coolness and judgment he then displayed he would have emerged from that incident the hero of the hour instead of, as happened, riding away followed by insult and threat without a moment's hesitation he spurted at the land sprang to the ground and seizing the hose attempted to rest it away what he ought to have done what any man retaining his common sense would have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing was to turn off the tap then he might have played football with the man or battle door and shuttle cock as he pleased and the twenty or thirty people who had rushed forward to assist would have only applauded his idea, however as he explained to us afterwards was to take away the hose from the man and for punishment turn it upon the fool himself the waterman's idea appeared to be the same namely to retain the hose as a weapon with which to soak Harris of course the result was that between them they sourced every dead and living thing within fifty yards except themselves one furious man too drenched to care what more happened to him leapt into the arena and also took a hand the three among them proceeded to compass with that hose they pointed it to heaven and the water descended upon the people in the form of an equinoctial storm they pointed it downwards and sent the water in rushing streams that took people off their feet or caught them about the waistline and doubled them up not one of them would loosen his grip upon the hose not one of them thought to turn the water off you might have concluded they were struggling with some prime evil force of nature in forty-five seconds so George said who was timing it they had swept that circus bear of every living thing except one dog who dripping like a water nymph rolled over by the force of water now on this side now on that still gallantly staggered again and again to its feet to bark defiance at what it evidently regarded as the powers of hell let loose men and women left their machines upon the ground and flew into the woods from behind every tree of importance peeped out wet angry heads at last they arrived upon the scene one man of sense braving all things he crept to the hydrant where still stood the iron key and screwed it down and then from forty trees began to creep more or less soaked human beings each one with something to say at first I fell to wondering whether a stretcher or a clothes jacket would be the more useful for the conveyance of Harris's remains back to the hotel I consider that George's promptness on that occasion saved Harris's life being dry and therefore able to run quicker he was there before the crowd Harris was for explaining things but George cut him short you get on that said George handing him his bicycle and go they don't know we belong to you and you may trust us implicitly and get in their way ride zigzagging case they shoot I wish this book to be a strict record of fact unmarred by exaggeration and therefore I have shown my description of this incident to Harris lest anything beyond bald narrative may have crept into it Harris maintains that it is exaggerated but admits that one or two people may have been sprinkled I have offered to turn a street hose on him at a distance of five and twenty yards and take his opinion afterwards as to whether sprinkled is the adequate term but he has declined the test again he insists there could not have been more than half a dozen people at the outside involved in the catastrophe that forty is a ridiculous misstatement I have offered to return with him to Hanover and make strict inquiry into the matter and this offer he has likewise declined under these circumstances I maintain that mine is a true and restrained narrative of an event that is by a certain number of Hanoverians remembered with bitterness unto this very day we left Hanover that same evening and arrived at Berlin in time for supper and an evening stroll Berlin is a disappointing town its center overcrowded its outlying parts are ruthless it's one famous street an attempt to combine Oxford Street with the Champs Elysees singularly unimposing being much too wide for its size its theatres dainty and charming where acting is considered of more importance than scenery or dress where long runs are unknown successful pieces being played again and again but never consecutively so that for a week running you'll see the same Berlin theatre and see a fresh play every night it's opera house unworthy of it it's two music halls with an unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness about them ill arranged and much too large for comfort in the Berlin cafes and restaurants the busy time is from midnight on till three yet most of the people who frequent them are up again at seven either the Berliner has solved a great problem of modern life how to do without sleep or with Carlisle he must be looking forward to eternity personally I know of no other town where such late hours are the vogue except St. Petersburg but your St. Petersburg does not get up early in the morning at St. Petersburg the music halls which it is the fashionable thing to attend after the theatre a drive to them taking half an hour in a swift sleigh do not practically begin till twelve through the navel at four o'clock in the morning you have to literally push your way and the favourite trains for travellers are those starting about five o'clock in the morning these trains save the Russian the trouble of getting up early he wishes his friends good night and drives down to the station comfortably after supper without putting the house to any inconvenience Potsdam the Versailles to Berlin is a beautiful little town situate among lanes and woods here in the shady ways of its quiet, far-stretching park of Saint-Soussi it is easy to imagine lean, snuffy Frederick bumbling with shrill Voltaire acting on my advice George and Harris consented not to stay long in Berlin but to push on to Dresden most that Berlin has to show can be seen better elsewhere he decided to be content with a drive through the town the Hotel Porter introduced us to a Droschka driver under whose guidance, so he assured us we should see everything worth seeing in the shortest possible time the man himself, who called for us at nine o'clock in the morning was all that could be desired he was bright, intelligent and well informed his German was easy to understand and he knew a little English with which to eek it out on occasion himself there was no fault to be found but his horse was the most unsympathetic brute I have ever sat behind he took a dislike to us the moment he saw us I was the first to come out of the hotel he turned his head and looked me up and down with a cold, glassy eye and then he looked across at another horse a friend of his that was standing facing him I knew what he said he had an expressive head he had no attempt to disguise his thought he said, funny things one does come across in the summertime, don't one? George followed me out the next moment and stood behind me the horse again turned his head and looked I have never known a horse that could twist himself as this horse did I have seen a camel apart do tricks with his neck that compelled one's attention but this animal was more like the thing a dusty day at Ascot followed by dinner with six old chums if I had seen his eyes looking at me from between his own hind legs I doubt if I should have been surprised he seemed more amused with George if anything than with myself he turned to his friend again Extraordinary, isn't it? he remarked I suppose there must be some place where they grow them and then he commenced licking flies off his own left shoulder he began to wonder whether he had lost his mother when young and had been brought up by a cat George and I climbed in and sat waiting for Harris he came a moment later myself, I thought he looked rather neat he wore a white flannel knickerbocker suit which he had made especially for bicycling in hot weather his hat may have been a trifle out of the common but it did keep the son off the horse gave one look at him said, got in himel as plainly as ever horse spoke and started off Dan Friedrich Strasser at a brisk walk leaving Harris and the driver standing on the pavement his owner called to him to stop but he took no notice they ran after us and overtook us at the corner of the Dorotian Strasser I could not catch what the man said to the horse he spoke quickly and excitedly but I gathered a few phrases such as got to earn a living somewhere, haven't I? who asked for your opinion? little you care so long as you can guzzle the horse cut the conversation short by turning up the Dorotian Strasser on his own account I think what he said was come on then, don't talk so much let's get the job over and where possible let's keep to the back streets opposite the Brandenburger Tor our driver hitched the reins to the whip, climbed down and came round to explain things to us he pointed out the Tirgarten and then descanted to us of the Reichstaghaus he had formed us of its exact height length and breadth after the manner of guides then he turned his attention to the gate he said it was constructed of sandstone in imitation of the propolier in Athens at this point the horse which had been occupying its leisure licking its own legs turned round its head it did not say anything, it just looked the man began again nervously, this time he said it was an imitation of the propolier here the horse proceeded up the Linden and nothing would persuade him not to proceed up the Linden his owner expostulated with him but he continued to trot on from the way he hitched his shoulders as he moved I somehow felt he was saying they've seen the gate haven't they very well that's enough as for the rest you don't know what you're talking about and they wouldn't understand you if you did it was the same throughout the length of the Linden the horse consented to stand still sufficiently long to enable us to have a good look at each sight and to hear the name of it all explanations and description he cut short by the simple process of moving on what these fellows want, he seemed to say to himself, is to go home and tell people they have seen these things if I'm doing them an injustice if they are more intelligent than they look they can get better information than this old fool of mine is giving them from the guidebook who wants to know how high a steeple is you don't remember it for the next five minutes when you are told and if you do it is because you have got nothing else in your head he just tires me with his talk why doesn't he hurry up and let us all get home to lunch upon reflection I am not sure that wall-eyed old brute had not sense on its side anyhow I know there have been occasions after the guide when I would have been glad of its interference but one is apt to sin one's mercies as the Scotch say and at the time we cursed that horse instead of blessing it end of chapter 6 three men on the bumble chapter 7 this Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Peter Yersley three men on the bumble and one on the bumble chapter 7 at a point between Berlin and Dresden George, who had for the last quarter of an hour so been looking very attentively out of the window said why in Germany is it the custom to put the letter-box up a tree why do they not fix it to the front door as we do I should hate having to climb up a tree to get my letters besides it is not fair to the postman letters must to a heavy man on windy nights be positively dangerous work if they will fix it to a tree why not fix it lower down why always among the top most branches but maybe I am misjudging the country he continued a new idea occurring to him possibly the Germans who are in many matters ahead of us have perfected a pigeon post even so I cannot help thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds while they were about it getting your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even to the average middle aged German I followed his gaze out of the window I said those are not letter-boxes they are birds nests you must understand this nation the German loves birds but he likes tidy birds a bird left to himself builds his nest just anywhere it is not a pretty object according to the German notion of prettiness there is not a bit of paint on it anywhere not a plaster image all round not even a flag the nest finished the bird proceeds to live outside it he drops things on the grass tweaks, ends of worms all sorts of things he is indelicate he makes love quarrels with his wife and feeds the children quite in public the German householder is shocked he says to the bird for many things I like you I like to look at you I like to hear you sing but I don't like your ways take this little box and put your rubbish inside where I can't see it come out when you want to sing but let your domestic arrangements be confined to the interior keep to the box and don't make the garden untidy in Germany one breathes in love of order with the air in Germany the babies beat time with their rattles they can't prefer the box and to regard with contempt the few uncivilized outcasts who continue to build their nests in trees and hedges in course of time every German bird one is confident will have his proper place in a full chorus this promiscuous and desultory warbling of his must one feels be irritating to the precise German mind there is no method in it the music loving German the bird with a specially well developed crop will be trained to conduct him and instead of wasting himself in a wood at four o'clock in the morning he will at the advertised time sing in a beer garden accompanied by a piano things are drifting that way your German likes nature but his idea of nature is a glorified Welsh harp he takes great interest in his garden he plants seven rose trees on the north side and if they do not grow up all the same size and shape it worries him so that he cannot sleep of nights every flower he ties to a stick this interferes with his view of the flower but he has the satisfaction of knowing it is there and that it is behaving itself the lake is lined with zinc and once a week he takes it up carries it into the kitchen and scours it in the geometrical centre of the grass plot which is sometimes as large as a tablecloth and is generally railed round he places a China dog the Germans are very fond of dogs but as a rule they prefer them of China the China dog never digs holes in the lawn to bury bones and never scatters a flower bed to the winds with his hind legs from the German point of view he is the ideal dog he stops where you put him and he is never where you do not want him perfect in all points according to the latest requirements of the Kennel Club or you can indulge your own fancy and have something unique you are not as with other dogs limited to breed in China you can have a blue dog or a pink dog for a little extra you can have a double headed dog on a certain fixed date in the autumn the German stakes his flowers and pushes to the earth and covers them with Chinese matting and on a certain fixed date in the spring and covers them and stands them up again if it happens to be an exceptionally fine autumn or an exceptionally late spring so much the worse for the unfortunate vegetable no true German would allow his arrangements to be interfered with by so unruly a thing as the solar system unable to regulate the weather he ignores it among trees your German's favourite is the poplar other disorderly nations may sing the charms of the rugged oak the spreading chestnut or the waving elm to the German all such with their willful untidy ways are eyesores the poplar grows where it is planted and how it is planted it has no improper rugged ideas of its own it does not want to wave or to spread itself it just grows straight and upright as a German tree should grow and so gradually the German is rooting out all other trees and replacing them with poplars the German likes the country but he prefers it as the lady thought she would the noble savage more dressed he likes his walk through the wood to a restaurant but the pathway must not be too steep it must have a brick gutter running down one side of it to drain it and every twenty yards or so it must have its seat on which he can rest and mop his brow for your German would no more think English Bishop dream of rolling down one tree hill he likes his view from the summit of the hill but he likes to find there a stone tablet telling him what to look at find a table and bench at which he can sit to partake of the frugal beer and beleaked a zimmel he has been careful to bring with him if in addition he can find a police notice posted on a tree forbidding him to do something or other that gives him an extra sense of comfort and security your German is not a verse even to wild scenery provided it be not too wild but if he consider it too savage he sets to work to tame it I remember in the neighbourhood of Dresden discovering a picturesque and narrow valley leading down towards the Elbe the winding roadway ran beside a mountain torrent which for a mile or so fretted and foamed over rocks and boulders between wood-covered banks I followed it enchanted until turning a corner I suddenly came across a gang of eighty or a hundred workmen they were busy tidying up that valley and making that stream respectable all the stones that were impeding the course of the water they were carefully picking out and carting away the bank on either side they were breaking up and cementing the overhanging trees and bushes the tangled vines and creepers they were rooting up and trimming down a little further I came upon the finished work the mountain valley has it ought to be according to German ideas the water now a broad sluggish stream flowed over a level gravelly bed between two walls crowned with stone coping at every hundred yards it gently descended down three shallow wooden platforms for a space on either side the ground had been cleared and at regular intervals young poplars planted each sapling was protected by a shield of wicker work and bossed by an iron rod in the course of a couple of years it is the hope of the local council to have finished that valley throughout its entire length and made it fit for a tidy-minded lover of German nature to walk in there will be a seat every fifty yards a police notice every hundred and a restaurant every half mile they are doing the same from the me-mill to the Rhine they are just tidying up the country I remember well the Viertal it was once the most romantic ravine to be found in the black forest the last time I walked down it some hundreds of Italian workmen were encamped there hard at work training the wild little Vier the way it should go bricking the banks for it here blasting the rocks for it there making cement steps for it down which it can travel soberly and without fuss for in Germany there is no nonsense talked about untrammeled nature in Germany nature has got to behave herself and not set a bad example to the children a German poet noticing waters coming down as Sadi describes somewhat exactly the waters coming down at Ledor would be too shocked to stop and write a literate verse about them he would hurry away and at once report them to the police then their foaming and their shrieking would be of short duration now then, now then, what's all this about the voice of German authority would say severely to the waters we can't have this sort of thing you know come down quietly can't you where do you think you are and the local German council would provide those waters with zinc pipes and wooden troughs and a corkscrew staircase and show them how to come down sensibly in the German manner it is a tidy land is Germany we reached Dresden on the Wednesday evening and stayed there over the Sunday taking one consideration with another Dresden perhaps is the most attractive town in Germany but it is a place to be lived in and visited its museums and galleries its palaces and gardens its beautiful and historically rich environment provide pleasure for a winter but bewilder for a week it has not the gaiety of Paris or Vienna which quickly pulls its charms are more solidly German and more lasting it is the mecca of the musician for five shillings in Dresden you can purchase a stall at the opera house together unfortunately it is a strong disinclination ever again to take the trouble of sitting out a performance in any English, French or American opera house the chief scandal of Dresden still centres round August the strong the man of sin as Carlisle always called him who is popularly reputed to have cursed Europe with over a thousand children castles where he imprisoned this discarded mistress or that existed in her claim to a better title for forty years it is said poor lady the narrow rooms where she ate her heart out and died are still shown chateau, shameful for this deed of infamy or that lies scattered round the neighbourhood like bones about a battlefield and most of your guide's stories are such as the young person educated in Germany had best not hear his life-sized portrait hangs in the fine zinger which he built as an arena for his wild beast fights when the people grew tired of them in the market place a beetle-browed, frankly animal man but with the culture and taste that so often wait upon animalism modern Dresden undoubtedly owes much to him but what the stranger in Dresden stares at most is perhaps its electric trams these huge vehicles flash through the streets at from ten to twenty miles an hour taking curves and corners after the manner of an Irish car-driver everybody travels by them excepting only officers in uniform who must not ladies in evening-dress going to ball or opera porters with their baskets sit side by side they are all important in the streets and everything and everybody makes haste to get out of their way if you do not get out of their way if you are alive when picked up then on your recovery you are fined for having been in their way this teaches you to be wary of them one afternoon Harris took a bumble by himself in the evening as we sat listening to the band at the Belvedere Harris said apropos of nothing in particular these Germans have no sense of humour what makes you think that, I asked why this afternoon, he answered I jumped on one of those electric cars, I wanted to see the town so I stood outside on the little platform what did you call it? the shti-plats, I suggested that's it, said Harris well you know the way they shake you about and how you have to look out for the corners and mind yourself when they stop and when they start I nodded there were about half a dozen of us standing there he continued and of course I am not experienced, the things started suddenly and that jerked me backwards I fell against a stout gentleman just behind me he could not have been standing very firmly himself and he in his turn fell back against a boy who was carrying a trumpet in a Green Bay's case they never smiled, neither the man nor the boy with the trumpet, they just stood there and looked sulky I was going to say I was sorry but before I could get the word out the tram eased up for some reason or other and that of course shot me forward again and I butted into a white-haired old chap who looked to me like a professor I smiled, never moved a muscle maybe he was thinking of something else I suggested that could not have been the case with them all replied Harris and in the course of that journey I must have fallen against every one of them at least three times you see, explained Harris they knew when the corners were coming and in which direction to brace themselves I as a stranger was naturally at a disadvantage the way I rolled and staggered about to that platform clutching wildly now at this man and now at that must have been really comic I don't say it was high-class humor but it would have amused most people those Germans seemed to see no fun in it whatever just seemed anxious, that was all there was one man, a little man who stood with his back against the break I fell against him five times, I counted them you would have expected the fifth time would have dragged a laugh out of him but it didn't, he merely looked tired they are a dull lot George also had an adventure at Dresden there was a shop near the Altmacht in the window of which were exhibited some cushions for sale the proper business of the shop was handling of glass and china the cushions appeared to be in the nature of an experiment they were very beautiful cushions hand embroidered on satin we often passed the shop and every time George paused and examined those cushions he said he thought his aunt would like one George has been very attentive of his during the journey he has written her quite a long letter every day and from every town we stop at he sends her off at present to my mind he is overdoing the business and more than once I have expostulated with him his aunt will be meeting other aunts and talking to them the whole class will become disorganised and unruly as a nephew I object to the impossible standard that George is setting up but he will not listen therefore it was that on the Saturday he left us after lunch saying he would go round to that shop and get one of those cushions for his aunt he said he would not be long and suggested our waiting for him we waited for what seemed to me rather a long time when he rejoined us he was empty handed and looked worried we asked him where his cushion was he said he hadn't got a cushion said he had changed his mind said he didn't think his aunt would care for a cushion evidently something was amiss we tried to get at the bottom of it but he was not communicative indeed his answers after our twentieth question or thereabouts became quite short in the evening however when he and I happened to be alone he approached the subject himself he said they are somewhat peculiar in some things these Germans I said what has happened well he answered there was that cushion I wanted for your aunt I remarked he returned he was huffy in a moment I never knew a man so touchy about an aunt why shouldn't I send a cushion to my aunt don't get excited I replied I am not objecting I respect you for it he recovered his temper and went on there were four in the window if you remember all very much alike and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks I don't pretend to speak German fluently but I can generally make myself understood with a little effort the contents of what is said to me provided they don't gabble I went into the shop a young girl came up to me she was a pretty quiet little soul one might almost say demure not at all the sort of girls from whom you would have expected such a thing I was never more surprised in all my life surprised about what I said George always assumes you know the end of the story while he is telling you the beginning it is an annoying method at what happened George at what I am telling you she smiled and asked me what I wanted I understood that all right there could have been no mistake about that I put down a twenty mark piece on the counter and said please give me a cushion she stared at me as if I had asked for a feather bed I thought maybe she had not heard so I repeated it louder if I had chucked her under the chin she could not have looked more surprised or indignant she said she thought I must be making a mistake I did not want to begin a long conversation and find myself stranded I said there was no mistake I pointed to my twenty mark piece and repeated for the third time that I wanted a cushion a twenty mark cushion another girl came up an elder girl and the first girl repeated to her what I had just said she seemed quite excited about it the second girl did not believe her did not think I looked the sort of man who would want a cushion she asked a question to me herself did you say you wanted a cushion she asked I have said it three times I answered I will say it again I want a cushion she said then you can't have one I was getting angry by this time if I hadn't really wanted the thing I should have walked out of the shop but there the cushions were in the window evidently for sale I didn't see why I couldn't have one I said I will have one it is a simple sentence the third girl came up at this point the three representing I fancy the whole force of the shop she was a bright-eyed saucy looking little wench this last one on any other occasion I might have been pleased to see her now her coming only irritated me I didn't see the need of three girls for this business the first two girls started explaining the thing to the third girl and before they were halfway through the third girl began to giggle she was a sort of girl who would giggle at anything chattering like Jenny Renz all three together and between every half dozen words they looked across at me and the more they looked at me the more the third girl giggled and before they had finished they were all three giggling the little idiots you might have thought I was a clown giving a private performance when she was steady enough to move the third girl came up to me she was still giggling she said if you get it will you go away at once I was only too anxious to go I told her so but I added I was not going without it I had made up my mind to have that cushion now if I stopped in the shop all night for it she rejoined the other two girls I thought they were going to get me the cushion and have done with the business instead of that the strangest thing possible happened the two other girls got behind the first girl all three still giggling heaven knows what about they pulled her towards me they pushed her close up to me and then before I knew what was happening she put her hands on my shoulders stood up on tiptoe and kissed me after which, burying her face in her apron she ran off, followed by the second girl the third girl opened the door for me and so evidently expected me to go that in my confusion I went, leaving my twenty marks behind me I didn't say I minded the kiss so I did not particularly want it while I did want the cushion I don't like to go back to the shop I cannot understand the thing at all I said, what did you ask for? he said, a cushion I said, that is what you wanted I know, what I mean is what was the actual German word you said he replied, a kuss I said, you have nothing to complain of it is somewhat confusing a kuss sounds as if it ought to be a cushion but it is not it is a kiss a kissen is a cushion you muddled up the two words people have done it before I don't know much about this sort of thing myself but you asked for a twenty mark kiss and from your description of the girl some people might consider the price reasonable anyhow, I should not still harris if I remember rightly he also has an aunt George agreed with me it would be better not End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of Three Men on the Bumble this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recorded by Peter Yersley Three Men on the Bumble by Jerome K. Jerome Chapter 8 We were on our way to Prague and were waiting in the great hall of the Dresden Station until such time as the powers that be should permit us onto the platform George, who had wandered to the bookstore, returned to us with a wild look in his eyes he said, I've seen it I said, seen what? he was too excited to answer intelligently he said, it's here, it's coming this way both of them, if you wait you'll see it for yourselves, I'm not joking it's the real thing as is usual about this period some paragraphs more or less serious had been appearing in the papers concerning the sea serpent and I thought for the moment he must be referring to this the collection, however, told me that here in the middle of Europe 300 miles from the coast such a thing was impossible before I could question him further he seized me by the arm look, he said, now am I exaggerating I turned my head and saw what I suppose few living Englishmen have ever seen before, the travelling British according to the continental idea accompanied by his daughter they were coming towards us in the flesh and blood, unless we were dreaming alive and concrete the English Milord and the English Miss as for generations they have been portrayed in the continental comic press and upon the continental stage they were perfect in every detail the man was tall and thin with sandy hair, a huge nose and long dandreary whiskers over a pepper and salt suit he wore a light overcoat reaching almost to his heels his white helmet was ornamented with a green veil a pair of opera glasses hung at his side and in his lavender-gloved hand he carried an Alpenstock a little taller than himself his daughter was long and angular her dress, I cannot describe my grandfather, poor gentleman might have been able to do so it would have been more familiar to him I can only say that it appeared to me unnecessarily short exhibiting a pair of ankles if I may be permitted to refer to such points that from an artistic point of view called rather for concealment her hat made me think of Mrs. Heymans but why I cannot explain she wore side spring boots Prunella I believe used to be the trade name Mittens and Pounce Ney she also carried an Alpenstock there is not a mountain within a hundred miles of Dresden and a black bag strapped to her waist her teeth stuck out like a rabbit's and her figure was that of a bolster on stilts Harris rushed for his camera and of course could not find it he never can when he wants it whenever we see Harris scuttling up and down like a lost dog shouting where's my camera what's the dickens have I done with my camera don't eyes review remember where I put my camera then we know that for the first time that day he has come across something worth photographing later on he remembered it was in his bag that is where it would be on an occasion like this they were not content with appearance they acted the thing to the letter they walked gaping round them at every step the gentleman had an open bydecker in his hand and the lady carried a phrase book they talked French that nobody could understand and German that they could not translate themselves the man poked at officials with his Alpenstock to attract their attention and the lady her eye catching sight of an advertisement of somebody's cocoa said shocking and turned the other way really there was some excuse for her one notices even in England the home of the proprieties that the lady who drinks cocoa appears according to the poster to require very little else in this world a yard or so of art muslin at the most on the continent she dispenses as far as one can judge with every other necessity of life not only is cocoa food and drink to her it should be clothes also according to the idea of the cocoa manufacturer but this is by the way of course they immediately became the center of attraction by being able to render them some slight assistance I gained the advantage of five minutes conversation with them they were very affable the gentleman told me his name was Jones and that he came from Manchester but he did not seem to know what part of Manchester or where Manchester was I asked him where he was going to but he evidently did not know he said it depended I asked him if he did not find an Alpenstock a clumsy thing to walk about with through a crowded town he admitted that occasionally it did get in the way I asked him if he did not find a veil interfere with his view of things he explained that you only wore it when the flies became troublesome I inquired of the lady if she did not find the wind blow cold she said she had noticed it especially at the corners I did not ask these questions one after another as I have here put them down I mixed them up with general conversation and we parted on good terms I have pondered much upon the apparition and have come to a definite opinion a man I met later at Frankfurt and to whom I described the pair said he had seen them himself in Paris three weeks after the termination of the Fechauda incident while a traveller for some English steelworks whom we met in Strasbourg remembered having seen them in Berlin during the excitement caused by the Transvaal question my conclusion is that they were actors out of work hired to do this thing in the interest of international peace the French foreign office wishful to allay the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for war with England secured this admirable couple and sent them round the town you cannot be amused at a thing and at the same time wants to kill it the French nation saw the English citizen and citizen s no caricature but the living reality and their indignation exploded in laughter the success of the strategy prompted them later on to offer their services to the German government with the beneficial results that we all know our own government might learn the lesson it might be as well to keep near Downing Street a few small fat Frenchman to be sent round the country when occasion called for it shrugging their shoulders and eating frog sandwiches or a file of untidy head Germans might be retained to walk about smoking long pipes saying so the public would laugh and exclaim war with such it would be too absurd failing in the government I recommend the scheme to the peace society our visit to Prague we were compelled to lengthen somewhat Prague is one of the most interesting towns in Europe its stones are saturated with history and romance its every suburb must have been a battlefield it is a town that conceived the reformation and hatched the 30 years war but half Prague's troubles one imagines might have been saved to it had it possessed windows less large and temptingly convenient the first of these mighty catastrophes it set rolling by throwing the seven Catholic counselors from the windows of its house onto the pikes of the hussites below later it gave the signal for the second by again throwing the imperial counselors from the windows of the old Berg in Khradzhin Prague's second fenstersturz since other fateful questions have been decided in Prague one assumes from there having been concluded without violence that such must have been discussed in cellars the window as an argument one feels would always have proved too strong a temptation to any true-born Prague in the Tynkirche stands the worm-eaten pulpit from which preached John Huss one may hear from the self-same desk today the voice of a papist priest while in far-off constants a rude block of stone half ivy-hidden marks a spot where Huss and Jerome died burning at the stake history is fond of her little ironies in this same Tynkirche lies buried Tushu Brahe the astronomer who made the common mistake of thinking the earth with its eleven hundred creeds and one humanity the center of the universe but who otherwise observed the stars clearly through Prague's dirty palace bordered alleys must have pressed often in hot haste and open-minded Valenstein they have dubbed him the hero in Prague and the town is honestly proud of having owned him for citizen in his gloomy palace in the Valenstein Platz they show as a sacred spot the cabinet where he prayed and seemed to have persuaded themselves he really had a soul its steep winding ways must have been choked a dozen times now by Sigismund Lang legions followed by fierce killing Taborites and now by pale Protestants pursued by the victorious Catholics of Maximilian now Saxons now Bavarians and now French now the saint of Gustavus Adolphus and now the steel fighting machines of Frederick the Great have thundered at its gates and fought upon its bridges the Jews have always been an important feature of Prague and finally they have assisted the Christians in their favourite occupation of slaughtering one another and the great flags suspended from the vaulting of the Alt Neuschule testifies to the courage with which they helped Catholic Ferdinand to resist the Protestant Swedes the Prague ghetto was one of the first to be established in Europe and in the tiny synagogue still standing the Jew of Prague has worshipped for 800 years his women folk devoutly listening to the ear holes provided for them in the massive walls a Jewish cemetery adjacent Beth Chaim or the House of Life seems as though it were bursting with its dead within its narrow acre it was the law of centuries that here or nowhere must the bones of Israel rest so the worn and broken tombstones lie piled in close confusion as though tossed and tumbled by the struggling host beneath the ghetto walls have long been levelled but the living Jews of Prague still cling to their fetid lanes though these are being rapidly replaced by fine new streets that promised to eventually transform this quarter into the hands-missed part of the town at Dresden they advised us not to talk German in Prague for years racial animosity between the German minority and the Czech majority has raged throughout Bohemia and to be mistaken for a German in certain streets of Prague is inconvenient to a man whose staying powers in a race are not what once they were however we did talk German in certain streets in Prague it was a case of talking German or nothing the Czech dialect is said to be of great antiquity and of highly scientific cultivation its alphabet contains 42 letters suggestive to a stranger of Chinese it is not a language to be picked up in a hurry we decided that on the whole there would be less risk to our constitution in keeping to German and as a matter of fact no harm came to us the explanation I can only surmise the Prague is an exceedingly acute person some subtle falsity of accent some slight grammatical inaccuracy may have crept into our German revealing to him the fact that in spite of all appearances to the contrary we were no true born Deutsche I do not assert this I put it forward as a possibility to avoid unnecessary danger however we did our sightseeing with the aid of a guide no guide I have ever come across is perfect this one had two distinct failings his English was decidedly weak indeed it was not English at all I do not know what you would call it it was not altogether his fault he had learnt English from a scotch lady I understand scotch fairly well to keep abreast of modern English literature this is necessary but to understand a broad scotch talked with a sclavonic accent occasionally relieved by German modifications taxes the intelligence for the first hour it was difficult to rid oneself of the conviction that the man was choking every moment we expected him to die on our hands in the course of the morning we grew accustomed to him and rid ourselves of the instinct to throw him on his back every time he opened his mouth and tear his clothes from him later we came to understand a part of what he said and this led to the discovery of his second failing it would seem he had lately invented a hair restorer which he had persuaded local chemist to take up and advertise half his time he had been pointing out to us not the beauties of Prague but the benefit likely to accrue human race from the use of this concoction and the conventional agreement with which under the impression he was waxing eloquent concerning views and architecture we had met his enthusiasm he had attributed to sympathetic interest in this wretched wash of his the result was that now there was no keeping him away from the subject ruined palaces and crumbling churches he dismissed with curt references mere frivolities encouraging a morbid taste for the decadent his duty as he saw it was not to lead us to dwell upon the ravages of time but rather to direct our attention to the means of repairing them what had we to do with broken headed heroes or bald headed saints our interest should be surely in the living world in the maidens with their flowing tresses or the flowing tresses they might have by judicious use of kofkyo in the young men with their fierce moustaches as pictured on the label unconsciously in his own mind he had to divide the world into two sections the past before use a sickly disagreeable looking uninteresting world the future after use a fat, jolly, god bless everybody sort of world and this unfitted him as a guide to scenes of medieval history he sent us each a bottle of the stuff to our hotel it appeared that in the early part of our converse with him we had unwittingly clamored for it personally I can neither praise it nor condemn it a long series of disappointments has disheartened me added to which a permanent atmosphere of paraffin however faint is apt to cause remark especially in the case of a married man now I never even try the sample I gave my bottle to george he asked for it to send to a man he knew in leeds I learnt later that harris had given him his bottle also to send to the same man a suggestion of onions has clung to this tour since we left Prague george has noticed it himself he attributes it to the prevalence of garlic in european cooking it was in Prague that harris and I did a kind and friendly thing to george we had noticed for some time past george was getting too fond of pilsner beer this german beer is an insidious drink especially in hot weather but it does not do to imbibe too freely of it it does not get into your head but after a time it spoils your waist I always say to myself on entering Germany now I will drink no german beer the white wine of the country with a little soda water perhaps occasionally a glass of m's or potash of beer never or at all events hardly ever it is a good and useful resolution which I recommend to all travellers I only wish I could keep to it myself george although I urged him refused to bind himself by any such hard and fast limit he said that in moderation german beer was good one glass in the morning said george one in the evening or even two that will do no harm to anyone maybe he was right it was his half dozen glasses that troubled harris and myself we ought to do something to stop it said harris it is becoming serious it's hereditary or so he has explained to me I answered it seems his family has always been thirsty there is apollinaris water replied harris which I believe with a little lemon squeezed into it is practically harmless what I am thinking about is this figure with all his natural elegance we talked the matter over and providence aiding us we fixed upon a plan for the ornamentation of the town a new statue has just been cast I forget of whom it was a statue I only remember that in the essentials it was just the usual sort of street statue representing the usual sort of gentleman with the usual stiff neck riding the usual sort of horse the horse that always walks on its hind legs keeping its front paws for beating time but in detail it possessed individuality instead of the usual sword or baton the man was holding stretched out in his hand his own plumed hat and the horse instead of the usual waterfall for a tail possessed a somewhat attenuated appendage that somehow appeared out of keeping with his ostentatious behaviour one felt that a horse with a tail like that would not have pranced so much it stood in a little square not far from the further end of the Karlsbrucher but it stood there only temporarily before deciding finally where to fix it the town authorities had resolved very sensibly to judge by practical test where it would look best accordingly they had made three rough copies of the statue mere wooden profiles things that would not bear looking at closely but which viewed from a little distance the effect that it was necessary one of these they had set up at the approach to the Franz Josefsbrucher a second stood in the open space behind the theatre and the third in the centre of the Wensseltsplatz if George is not in the secret of this thing said Harris we were walking by ourselves for an hour he having remained behind in the hotel to write a letter to his aunt if he has not observed these statues then by their aid we will make a better and a thinner man of him and that this very evening so during dinner we sounded him judiciously and finding him ignorant of the matter we took him out and led him by side streets to the place where stood the real statue George was for looking at it and passing on as is his way with statues but we insisted on his pulling up and viewing the thing conscientiously we walked him round that statue four times and showed it to him from every possible point of view I think on the whole we rather bored him with the thing but our object was to impress it upon him we told him the history of the man who rode upon the horse the name of the artist who had made the statue how much it weighed how much it measured we worked that statue into his system by the time we had done with him he knew more about that statue for the time being than he knew about anything else we looked him in that statue and only let him go at last on the condition that he would come again with us in the morning when we could all see it better and for such purpose we saw to it that he made a note in his pocket book of the place where the statue stood then we accompanied him to his favourite beer-hall and sat beside him telling him anecdotes of men who, unaccustomed to German beer and drinking too much of it had gone mad and developed homicidal mania of men who had died young through drinking German beer of lovers that German beer had been the means of parting forever from beautiful girls at ten o'clock we started to walk back to the hotel it was a stormy looking night with heavy clouds drifting over a light moon Harris said we won't go back the same way we came we'll walk back by the river it is lovely in the moonlight Harris told a sad history as we walked about a man he once knew who is now in a home for harmless imbeciles he said he recalled the story because it was on just such another night as this that he was walking with that man the very last time he ever saw the poor fellow they were strolling down the Thames embankment Harris said and the man frightened him then by persisting that he saw the statue of the Duke of Wellington at the corner of Westminster Bridge when, as everybody knows it stands in Piccadilly it was at this exact instant that we came in sight of the first of these wooden copies it occupied the centre of a small rail in square a little above us on the opposite side of the way George suddenly stood still and lent against the wall of the key what's the matter? I said feeling giddy he said I do a little let's rest here a moment he stood there with his eyes glued to the thing he said speaking huskily talking of statues what strikes me is how very much one statue is like another statue Harris said I cannot agree with you there pictures if you like some pictures are very like other pictures but with the statue there is always something distinctive take that statue we saw early in the evening continued Harris before he went into the concert hall it represented a man sitting on a horse in Prague you will see other statues of men on horses but nothing at all like that one said George they are all alike it's always the same horse and it's always the same man they are all exactly alike it's idiotic nonsense to say they are not he appeared to be angry with Harris what makes you think so I asked what makes me think so retorted George now turning upon me why look at that damned thing over there I said what's damned thing why that thing said George look at it there is the same horse with half a tail standing on its hind legs the same man without his hat the same Harris said you are talking now about the statue we saw in the ring plants replied George I am talking about the statue over there what statue said Harris George looked at Harris but Harris is a man who might with care have been a fair amateur actor his face merely expressed friendly sorrow mingled with alarm next George turned his gaze on me I endeavored so far as lay with me to copy Harris's expression adding to it on my own account a touch of reproof will you have a cab I said as kindly as I could to George I'll run and get one what's the devil do I want with a cab he answered ungraciously can't you fellows understand a joke it's like being at with a couple of confounded old women saying which he started off across the bridge leaving us to follow I am so glad that was only a joke of yours said Harris on our overtaking him I knew a case of softening of the brain that began oh you're a silly ass said George cutting him short you know everything he really was most unpleasant in his manner we took him round by the river side of the theater we told him it was the shortest way and as a matter of fact it was in the open space behind the theater stood the second of these wooden apparitions George looked at it and again stood still what's the matter said Harris kindly you're not ill are you I don't believe this is the shortest way said George I assure you it is persisted Harris well I'm going the other said George and he turned and went we as before following him along the third in Anstrasse Harris and I talked about private lunatic asylums which Harris said were not well managed in England he said a friend of his a patient in a lunatic asylum George said interrupting you appear to have a large number of friends in lunatic asylums he said it in a most insulting tone as though to imply that that is where one would look for the majority of Harris's friends but Harris did not get angry he merely replied quite mildly well it really is extraordinary when one comes to think of it how many of them have gone that way sooner or later I get quite nervous sometimes now at the corner of the event sales plants Harris who was a few steps ahead of us paused it's a fine street isn't it he said sticking his hands in his pockets and gazing up at it admiringly George and I followed suit 200 yards away from us in its very center was the third of these ghostly statues I think it was the best of the three the most like the most deceptive it stood boldly outlined against the wild sky the horse on its hind legs with its curiously attenuated tail the man bear headed pointing with his plumed hat to the now entirely visible moon I think if you don't mind said George he spoke with almost a pathetic ring in his voice his aggressiveness had completely fallen from him that I will have that it says one hand I thought you were looking queer said Harris kindly it's your head isn't it perhaps it is answered George I have noticed it coining on said Harris but I didn't like to say anything to you you fancy you see things don't you no no it isn't that replies George rather quickly I don't know what it is I do said Harris solemnly and I'll tell you it's this German you're drinking I have known a case where a man don't tell me about him just now said George I dare say it's true but somehow I don't feel I want to hear about him you are not used to it said Harris I shall give it up from tonight said George I think you must be right it doesn't seem to agree with me we took him home and saw him to bed he was very gentle and quite grateful one evening later on after a long day's ride followed by a most satisfactory dinner we started him on a big cigar and removing things from his reach told him of this stratagem that for his good we had planned how many copies of that statue did you say we saw asked George after we had finished three replied Harris only three said George are you sure positive replied Harris why oh nothing answered George but I don't think he quite believed Harris from Prague we traveled to Nuremberg through Carlsbad good Germans when they die go they say to Carlsbad as good Americans go to Paris this I doubt seeing that it is a small place with no convenience for a crowd in Carlsbad you rise at five the fashionable hour for promenade when the band stays under the colonnade and the sprudel is filled with a packed throng over a mile long being from six to eight in the morning here you may hear more languages spoken than the tower of Babel could have echoed Polish Jews and Russian princes Chinese mandarins and Turkish pashas Norwegians looking as if they had stepped out of Ibsen's plays women from the boulevard Spanish grandees and English countesses mountaineers from Allegro and millionaires from Chicago you will find every dozen yards every luxury in the world Carlsbad provides for its visitors with the one exception of pepper that you cannot get within five miles of the town for money what you can get there for love is not worth taking away pepper to the liver brigade that forms four fifths of Carlsbad's customers is poison and prevention being better than cure it is carefully kept out of the neighborhood pepper parties are formed in Carlsbad to journey to some place without the boundary and they are indulged in pepper orgies Nuremberg if one expects a town of medieval appearance disappoints quaint corners picturesque glimpses there are in plenty but everywhere they are surrounded and intruded upon by the modern and even what is ancient is not nearly as ancient as one thought it was a town like a woman is only as old as it looks and Nuremberg is still a comfortable looking day its age somewhat difficult to conceive under its fresh paint and stucco in the blaze of the gas and the electric light still looking closely you may see the wrinkled walls and grey towers the end of chapter eight of three men on the bumble