 CHAPTER 1 THE NIGHTED NAVE OF BURGAN One day it occurred to me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle, so I determined to do it. This was in March 1878. I looked about me for the right sort of person to accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally hired a Mr. Harris for this service. It was also my purpose to study art while in Europe. Mr. Harris was in sympathy with me in this. He was as much of an enthusiast in art as I was, and not less anxious to learn to paint. I desired to learn the German language, so did Harris. Toward the middle of April we sailed in the Hossatia, Captain Brandt, and had a very pleasant trip indeed. After a brief rest at Hamburg we made preparations for a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, but at the last moment we changed the program for private reasons and took the express train. We made a short halt at Frankfurt on the main, and found it an interesting city. I would have liked to visit the birthplace of Gutenberg, but it could not be done, as no memorandum of the site of the house has been kept. So we spent an hour in the Goethe mansion instead. The city permits this house to belong to private parties instead of gracing and dignifying herself with the honour of possessing and protecting it. Frankfurt is one of the sixteen cities which have the distinction of being the place where the following incident occurred, Charlemagne, while chasing the Saxons, as he said, or being chased by them, as they said, arrived at the bank of the river at dawn in a fog. The enemy were either before him or behind him, but in any case he wanted to get across very badly. He would have given anything for a guide, but none was to be had. Presently he saw a deer followed by her young approach the water. He watched her, judging that she would seek a ford, and he was right. She waited over, and the army followed. So a great Frankish victory, or defeat, was gained or avoided, and in order to commemorate the episode, Charlemagne commanded a city to be built there, which he named Frankfurt, the ford of the Franks. None of the other cities where this event happened were named for it. This is good evidence that Frankfurt was the first place it occurred at. Frankfurt has another distinction. It is the birthplace of the German alphabet, or, at least of the German word for alphabet, Buchstaben. They say that the first movable types were made on birch sticks, Buchstabe, hence the name. I was taught a lesson in political economy in Frankfurt. I had brought from home a box containing a thousand very cheap cigars. By way of experiment, I stepped into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars, and laid down a silver piece worth forty-eight cents. The man gave me forty-three cents change. In Frankfurt everybody wears clean clothes, and I think we noticed that this strange thing was the case in Hamburg, too, and in the villages along the road. Even in the narrowest and poorest and most ancient quarters of Frankfurt, neat and clean clothes were the rule. The little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body's lap, and as for the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. One could never detect a smurch or a grain of dust upon them. The streetcar conductors and drivers wore pretty uniforms, which seemed to be just out of the band box, and their manners were as fine as their clothes. In one of the shops I had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death. It is entitled The Legends of the Rhine from Basel to Rotterdam by F. J. Keifer, translated by L. W. Garnham, B. A. All tourists mention the Rhine legends in that sort of way which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar with them all his life and that the reader cannot possibly be ignorant of them, but no tourist ever tells them. So this little book fed me in a very hungry place, and I, in my turn, intend to feed my reader with one or two little lunches from the same larder. I shall not mar Garnham's translation by meddling with its English, for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building English sentences on the German plan and punctuating them accordingly to no plan at all. In the chapter devoted to Legends of Frankfurt I find the following. The Nave of Bergen In Frankfurt at the Romer was a great mask-ball at the Coronation Festival, and in the illuminated saloon, the clanging music invited to dance, and splendidly appeared the rich toilets and charms of the ladies, and the festively costumed princes and knights. All seemed pleasure, joy, and roguish gaiety, only one of the numerous guests had a gloomy exterior, but exactly the black armor in which he walked about excited general attention, and his tall figure as well as the noble propriety of his movements attracted especially the regards of the ladies. Who the night was? Nobody could guess, for his vizier was well closed and nothing made him recognizable. Proud and yet modest he advanced to the empress, bowed on one knee before her seat, and begged for the favour of a waltz with the Queen of the Festival, and she allowed his request. With light and graceful steps he danced through the long saloon, with a sovereign who thought never to have found a more dexterous and excellent dancer. But also, by the grace of his manner and fine conversation, he knew to win the Queen, and she graciously accorded him a second dance for which he begged, a third and a fourth, as well as others, were not refused him. How all regarded the happy dancer, how many envied him the high favour! How increased curiosity, who the masked knight could be! Also the emperor became more and more excited with curiosity, and with great suspense one awaited the hour when according to mask law each masked guest must make himself known. This moment came, but although all other unmasked, the secret knight still refused to allow his features to be seen, till at last the Queen, driven by curiosity, and vexed at the obstinate refusal, commanded him to open his vizier. He opened it, and none of the high ladies and knights knew him, but from the crowded spectators two officials advanced who recognized the black dancer, and horror and terror spread in the saloon as they said who the supposed knight was. It was the executioner of Bergen. But glowing with rage, the king commanded to seize the criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance with the Queen. So disgraced the empress and insulted the crown. The culpable threw himself at the emperor and said, Indeed I have heavily sinned against all noble guests assembled here, but most heavily against you, my sovereign and my Queen. The Queen is insulted by my haughtiness equal to treason, but no punishment, even blood, will not be able to wash out the disgrace which you have suffered by me. Therefore, O King, allow me to propose a remedy, to efface the shame, and to render it as if not done. Draw your sword and knight me, then I will throw down my gauntlet to everyone who dares to speak disrespectfully of my king. The emperor was surprised at this bold proposal, however it appeared the wisest to him. You are a knave, he replied, after a moment's consideration. However your advice is good, and displays prudence, as your offence shows adventurous courage. Well, then, and gave him the night-stroke, so I raise you to nobility, who begged for grace for your offence, now kneels before me, rise as night. Naivish you have acted, and knave of Bergen shall you be called henceforth. And gladly the black night rose. Three cheers were given in honour of the emperor, and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with which the queen danced still once with a knave of Bergen. CHAPTER II We stopped at a hotel by the railway station. Next morning, as we sat in my room waiting for breakfast to come up, we got a good deal interested in something which was going on over the way in front of another hotel. First, the personage who is called the Portier, who is not the porter, but is a sort of first mate of a hotel—footnote I, see Appendix A—appeared at the door in a spick-and-span-new blue-cloth uniform decorated with shining brass buttons, and with bands of gold lace around his cap and wristbands, and he wore white gloves, too. He shed an official glance upon the situation, and then began to give orders. Two women's servants came out with pales and brooms and brushes, and gave the sidewalk a thorough scrubbing. Meanwhile two others scrubbed the four marble steps which led up to the door. Beyond these we could see some men's servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase. This carpet was carried away, and the last grain of dust beaten and banged and swept out of it, and then brought back and put down again. The brass stair-rods received an exhaustive polishing and were returned to their places. Now a troop of servants brought pots and tubs of blooming plants and formed them into a beautiful jungle about the door and the base of the staircase. Other servants adorned all the balconies of the various storeys with flowers and banners. Others ascended to the roof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there. Now came some more chamber-maids, and retouched the sidewalk, and afterward wiped the marble steps with damp cloths and finished by dusting them off with feather-brushes. Now a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down the marble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curb-stone. The portier cast his eye along it and found it was not absolutely straight. He commanded it to be straightened. The servants made the effort, made several efforts in fact, but the portier was not satisfied. He finally had it taken up and then he put it down himself and got it right. At this stage of the proceedings a narrow bright red carpet was unrolled and stretched from the top of the marble steps to the curb-stone along the center of the black carpet. This red path cost the portier more trouble than even the black one had done, but he patiently refixed and refixed it until it was exactly right and lay precisely in the middle of the black carpet. In New York these performances would have gathered a mighty crowd of curious and intensely interested spectators, but here it only captured an audience of half a dozen little boys who stood in a row across the pavement, some with their school knapsacks on their backs and their hands in their pockets, others with arms full of bundles and all absorbed in the show. Occasionally one of them skipped irreverently over the carpet and took up a position on the other side. This always visibly annoyed the portier. Now came a waiting interval. The landlord in plain clothes and bare-headed placed himself on the bottom marble step, abreast the portier, who stood on the other end of the same steps. Six or eight waiters gloved bare-headed and wearing their whitest linen, their whitest cravats and their finest swallow-tails grouped themselves about these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear. Nobody moved or spoke any more but only waited. In a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard and immediately groups of people began to gather in the street. Two or three open carriages arrived and deposited some maids of honor and some male officials at the hotel. Presently another open carriage brought the Grand Duke of Baden, a stately man in uniform who wore the handsome brass-mounted steel-spiked helmet of the army on his head. Last came the Empress of Germany and the Grand Duchess of Baden in a closed carriage. These passed through the low-bowing groups of servants and disappeared in the hotel, exhibiting to us only the backs of their heads, and then the show was over. It appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it is to launch a ship. But as to Heidelberg the weather was growing pretty warm, very warm in fact, so we left the valley and took quarters at the Schloss Hotel on the hill above the castle. Heidelberg lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge, a gorge the shape of a shepherd's crook. If one looks up it he perceives that it is about straight for a mile and a half then makes a sharp curve to the right and disappears. This gorge, along whose bottom pours the swift necker, is confined between, or cloven through, a couple of long steep ridges a thousand feet high and densely wooded clear to their summits, with the exception of one section which has been shaved and put under cultivation. These ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge and form two bold and conspicuous headlands with Heidelberg nestling between them. From their bases spreads away the vast, dim expanse of the Rhine Valley, and into this expanse the necker goes wandering in shining curves and is presently lost to view. Now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more he will see the Schloss Hotel on the right perched on a precipice overlooking the necker, a precipice which is so sumptrously cushioned and draped with foliage that no glimpse of the rock appears. The building seems very airily situated. It has the appearance of being on a shelf halfway up the wooded mountainside, and as it is remote and isolated and very white it makes a strong mark against the lofty, leafy rampart at its back. This hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty and one which might be adopted with advantage by any house which is perched in a commanding situation. This feature may be described as a series of glass-enclosed parlours clinging to the outside of the house, one against each and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. They are like long, narrow, high-ceiling birdcages hung against the building. My room was a corner room and had two of these things, a north one and a west one. From the north cage one looks up the necker gorge. From the west one he looks down it. This last affords the most extensive view and it is one of the loveliest that can be imagined too. Out of a billowy upheaval of vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin of Heidelberg Castle. Footnote 2. C. Appendix B. With empty window arches, ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers, the leer of inanimate nature, deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms but royal still and beautiful. It is a fine sight to see the evening sunlight suddenly strike the leafy declivity at the castle's base and dash up it and drench it as with a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are in deep shadow. Behind the castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, forest-clad, and beyond that a nobler and loftier one. The castle looks down upon the compact brown roofed town and from the town two picturesque old bridges span the river. Now the view broadens, through the gateway of the sentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide, rine plain, which stretches away softly and richly tinted, grows gradually and dreamily indistinct and finally melts imperceptibly into the remote horizon. I have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene and satisfying charm about it as this one gives. The first night we were there we went to bed and to sleep early, but I awoke at the end of two or three hours and lay a comfortable while listening to the soothing patter of the rain against the balcony windows. I took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the murmur of the restless neck-har, tumbling over her dykes and dams far below in the gorge. I got up and went into the west balcony and saw a wonderful sight. A way down on the level under the black mass of the castle, the town lay, stretched along the river, its intricate cobweb of streets, jeweled with twinkling lights. There were rows of lights on the bridges, these flung lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows of the arches. And away, at the extremity of all this fairy spectacle, blinked and glowed a massed multitude of gas jets which seemed to cover acres of ground. It was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread out there. I did not know before that a half-mile of sextuple railway tracks could be made such an endowment. One thinks Heidelberg, by day, with its surroundings, is the last possibility of the beautiful, but when he sees Heidelberg by night, a fallen milky way, with that glittering railway-constellation pinned to the border, he requires time to consider upon the verdict. One never tires of poking about in the dense woods that clothe all these lofty Neckar hills to their beguiling and impressive charm in any country, but German legends and fairy tales have given these an added charm. They have peopled all that region with gnomes and dwarfs, and all sorts of mysterious and uncanny creatures. At the time I am writing of, I had been reading so much of this literature that sometimes I was not sure but I was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies as realities. One afternoon I got lost in the woods about a mile from the hotel, and presently fell into a train of dreamy thought about animals which talk, and cobalts, and enchanted folk, and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff, and so, by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining I glimpsed small, flitting shapes here and there down the columned aisles of the forest. It was a place which was peculiarly meat for the occasion. It was a pine wood with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one's footfall made no more sound than if he were treading on wool. The tree trunks were as round and straight and smooth as pillars, and stood close together. They were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five feet above ground, and from there upwards so thick with boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through. The world was bright with sunshine outside, but a deep and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep silence so profound that I seemed to hear my own breathings. When I had stood ten minutes thinking and imagining and getting my spirit in tune with the place, and in the right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven suddenly uttered a hoarse croak over my head. It made me start, and then I was angry because I started. I looked up, and the creature was sitting on a limb, right over me, looking down at me. I felt something of the same sense of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds that a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him. I eyed the raven, and the raven eyed me. Nothing was said during some seconds. Then the bird stepped a little way along his limb to get a better point of observation, lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his shoulders toward me, and croaked again, a croak with a distinctly insulting expression about it. If he had spoken in English, he could not have said any more plainly than he did say in raven, Well, what do you want here? I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in some mean act by a responsible being and reproved for it. However I made no reply, I would not bandy words with a raven. The adversary waited a while, with his shoulders still lifted, his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright eye fixed on me. Then he threw out two or three more insults, which I could not understand, further than that I knew a portion of them consisted of language not used in church. I still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head and called. There was an answering croak from a little distance in the wood, evidently a croak of inquiry. The adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other raven dropped everything and came. The two sat side by side on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively as two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. The thing became more and more embarrassing. They called in another friend. This was too much. I saw that they had the advantage of me, and so I concluded to get out of the scrape by walking out of it. They enjoyed my defeat as much as any low white people could have done. They crammed their necks and laughed at me. For a raven can laugh just like a man. They squalled insulting remarks after me, as long as they could see me. They were nothing but ravens, I knew that. What they thought of me could be a matter of no consequence, and yet when even a raven shouts after you, what a hat! Oh, pull down your vest! And that sort of thing. It hurts you, and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning and pretty arguments. Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no question about that. But I suppose there are very few people who can understand them. I never knew but one man who could. I knew he could, however, because he told me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who had lived in a lonely corner of California among the woods and mountains a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate any remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. According to Jim Baker, some animals have only a limited education, and some use only simple words, and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure. Whereas certain other animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command of language, and a ready and fluent delivery. Consequently, these latter talk a great deal. They like it. They are so conscious of their talent, and they enjoy showing off. Baker said that after long and careful observation he had come to the conclusion that the Blue Jays were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said he, There's more to a Blue Jays than any other creature. He has got more moods and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures. And, mind you, whatever a Blue Jays feels, he can put into language. And no mere commonplace language, either, but rattle an out-and-out book talk and bristling with metaphor, too. Just bristling. And as for command of language, why you never see a Blue Jays get stuck for a word no man ever did. They just boil out of him. And another thing. I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird or cow or anything that uses as good grammar as a Blue Jays. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does. But you let a cat get excited once. You let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed nights, and you'll hear a grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Now, ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so. It's the sickening grammar they use. Now, I've never heard a Jays use bad grammar, but very seldom. And when they do, they are as ashamed as a human. They shut right down and leave. You may call a Jays a bird, well, so he is, in a measure, but he's got feathers on him and don't belong to no church, perhaps. But otherwise, he is just as much human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A Jays' gifts and instincts and feelings and interests cover the whole ground. A Jays hasn't got any more principle than a congressman. A Jays will lie. A Jays will steal. A Jays will deceive. A Jays will betray. And four times out of five, a Jays will go back on his solemnness promise. The sacredness of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram into no Blue Jays' head. Now, on top of all this, there's another thing. A Jays can outswear any gentleman in the mines. You think a cat can swear? Well, a cat can. But you give a Blue Jays a subject that calls for his reserve powers. And where is your cat? Don't talk to me. I know too much about this thing. In the one little particular of scolding, just good clean out and out scolding, a Blue Jays can lay over anything human or divine. Yes, sir, a Jays is everything that a man is. A Jays can cry. A Jays can laugh. A Jays can feel shame. A Jays can reason and plan and discuss. A Jays likes gossip and scandal. A Jays has got a sense of humor. A Jays knows when he is an ass just as well as you do. Maybe better. If a Jays ain't human, he better take in his sign. That's all. Now, I'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some Blue Jays. CHAPTER III BAKERS BLUE JAY YARN When I first began to understand Jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. Seven years ago the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands his house, been empty ever since, a log house with a plank roof. Just one big room, no more. No ceiling, nothing between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin with my cat taking the sun, looking at the Blue Hills and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees and thinking of the home away yonder in the States that I hadn't heard from in thirteen years. When a Blue Jay lit on that house with an acorn in his mouth and he says, Hello! I reckon I've struck something. When he spoke, the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn't care. His mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum, looking down a jug. Then he glanced up with his bright eyes and gave a wink or two with his wings, which signifies gratification, you understand, and says, Looks like a hole! It's located like a hole! Blamed if I don't believe it is a hole! Then he cocked his head down and took another look. He glances up perfectly joyful this time, winks his wings and his tail both and says, Oh no! This ain't no fat thing, I reckon. If I ain't in luck, why, it's a perfectly elegant hole. So he flew down and got that acorn and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back with a heavenly smile on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude and that smile faded gradually out of his countenance like breath off an eraser and the queerest look of surprise took its place. Then he says, Why, I didn't hear it fall! He cocked his eye at the hole again and took a long look, raised up and shook his head, stepped around to the other side of the hole and took another look from that side, shook his head again. He studied a while, then he just went into the details, walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every point of the compass. No use. Now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back of his head with his right foot a minute and finally says, Well, it's too many for me! That's certain. Must be mighty long a hole. However, I ain't got no time to fool around here. I got to tend to business. I reckon it's all right. Chance it anyway. So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what would become of it. But he was too late. He held his eye there as much as a minute. Then he raised up inside and says, Confound it! I don't seem to understand this thing. No way! However, I'll tackle her again. Fetched another acorn and done his level best to see what would become of it. But he couldn't. He says, Well, I never struck no such a hole as this before. I'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of hole. Then he began to get mad. He held in for a spell walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself. But his feeling's got the upper hand of him presently. And he broke loose and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a little thing. When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute. Then he says, Well, you're a long hole and a deep hole and a mighty singular hole altogether. But I've started in to fill you. And I'm damned if I don't fill you if it takes a hundred years. And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was born. He laid into his work like a nigger. And the way he hoeved acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped to take a look anymore. He just hoeved them in and went for more. Well, at last he could hardly flop his wings. He was so tuckered out. Comes a dropin' down, once more, sweatin' like an ice pitcher, dropped his acorn in and says, Now I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time. So he bent down for a look. If you'll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with rage. He says, I've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family thirty years. And if I can see a sign of one of them I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes. He just had strength enough to crawl up onto the comb and lean his back again the chimbly. And then he collected his impressions and begun to free his mind. I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity in the minds was only just the rudiments, as you may say. Another Jay was going by and heard him doing his devotions and stops to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him the whole circumstance and says, Now, yonder's the whole! And if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself! So this fellow went and looked and comes back and says, How many did you say you put in there? Not any less than two tons! says the sufferer. The other Jay went and looked again. He couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more Jay's come. They all examined the whole. They all made the sufferer tell it over again. Then they all disgusted, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done. They called in more Jay's. Then more and more. Till pretty soon this whole region appeared to have a blue flush about it. There must have been five thousand of them. And such another joying and disputing and ripping and cussing you never heard. Every Jay in the whole lot put his eye to the whole and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the Jay that went there before him. They examined the house all over too. The door was standing half open, and at last one old Jay happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course that knocked the mystery galley west in a second. There lay the acorns scattered all over the floor. He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. Come here, he says. Come here, everybody! Hanged if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns! They all came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first Jay had tackled hit him home, and he fell over backwards suffocating with laughter, and the next Jay took his place and done the same. Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for an hour and gaffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me if Blue Jay hasn't got a sense of humor because I know better. And memory too. They brought Jay's here from all over the United States to look down that hole every summer for three years. Other birds too. And they could all see the point except an owl that come from Nova Scotia to visit the Yosemite, and he took this thing in on his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny in it. But then he was a good deal disappointed about Yosemite, too. CHAPTER IV. student life. The laborious beer-king. The summer semester was in full tide. Consequently the most frequent figure in and about Heidelberg was the student. Most of the students were Germans, of course, but the representatives of foreign lands were very numerous. They hailed from every corner of the globe. For instruction is cheap in Heidelberg, and so is living, too. The Anglo-American club, composed of British and American students, had twenty-five members, and there was still much material left to draw from. Nine-tenths of the Heidelberg students wore no badge or uniform. The other tenths wore caps of various colors and belonged to social organizations called cores. There were five cores, each with a color of its own. There were white caps, blue caps, and red, yellow and green ones. The famous dueling fight is confined to the core boys. The neep seems to be a specialty of theirs, too. Neeps are held now and then to celebrate great occasions, like the election of a beer-king, for instance. The solemnity is simple. The five cores assemble at night, and at a signal they all fall loading themselves with beer out of pint-mugs as fast as possible, and each man keeps his own count, usually by laying aside a Lucifer match for each mug he empties. The election is soon decided. When the candidates can hold no more, a count is instituted, and the one who has drank the greatest number of pints is proclaimed king. I was told that the last beer-king, elected by the core or by his own capabilities, emptied his mug seventy-five times. No, stomach could hold all that quantity at one time, of course, but there are ways of frequently creating a vacuum which those who have been much at sea will understand. One sees so many students abroad at all hours that he presently begins to wonder if they ever have any working hours. Some of them have, some of them haven't. Each can choose for himself whether he will work or play, for German university life is a very free life, seems to have no restraints. The student does not live in the college buildings but hires his own lodgings in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when and where he pleases. He goes to bed, when it suits him, and does not get up at all unless he wants to. He is not entered at the university for any particular length of time, so he is likely to change about. He passes no examinations upon entering college, he merely pays a trifling fee of five or ten dollars, receives a card and titling him to the privileges of the university, and that is the end of it. He is now ready for business, or play, as he shall prefer. If he likes to work he finds a large list of lectures to choose from. He selects the subjects which he will study, and enters his name for these studies. But he can skip attendance. The result of this system is that lecture courses upon specialties of an unusual nature are often delivered to very slim audiences, while those upon more practical and everyday matters of education are delivered to very large ones. I heard of one case where, day after day, the lecturer's audience consisted of three students, and all was the same three, but one day two of them remained away. The lecturer began as usual, ''Gentlemen!'' Then without a smile he corrected himself, saying, ''Sir!'' and went on with his discourse. It is said that the vast majority of the Heidelberg students are hard workers and make the most of their opportunities, that they have no surplus means to spend in dissipation and no time to spare for frolicking. One lecture follows right on the heels of another, with very little time for the student to get out of one hall and into the next, but the industrious ones manage it by going on a trot. The professors assist them in the saving of their time by being promptly in their little boxed-up pulpits when the hours strike, and as promptly out again when the hour finishes. I entered an empty lecture room one day just before the clock struck. The place had simple, unpainted pine desks and benches for about two hundred persons. About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread open their notebooks and dipped their pens in ink. When the clock began to strike, a burly professor entered, was received with a round of applause, moved swiftly down the center aisle, said, ''Gentlemen!'' and began to talk as he climbed his pulpit steps. And by the time he had arrived in his box and faced his audience, his lecture was well under way, and all the pens were going. He had no notes. He talked with prodigious rapidity and energy for an hour. Then the students began to remind him in certain well-understood ways that his time was up. He seized his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down his pulpit steps, got out the last word of his discourse as he struck the floor. Nobody rose respectfully, and he swept rapidly down the aisle and disappeared. An instant rush for some other lecture room followed, and in a minute I was alone with the empty benches once more. Yes, without doubt idle students are not the rule. Out of eight hundred in the town I knew the faces of only about fifty, but these I saw everywhere and daily. They walked about the streets and the wooded hills. They drove in cabs. They boated on the river. They sipped beer and coffee afternoons in the Schloss Gardens. A good many of them wore coloured caps of the corps. They were finely and fashionably dressed. Their manners were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless, comfortable life. If a dozen of them sat together in a lady or a gentleman past whom one of them knew and saluted, they all rose to their feet and took off their caps. The members of a corps always received a fellow member in this way, too. But they paid no attention to members of other groups. They did not seem to see them. This was not a discuracy. It was only a part of the elaborate and rigid corps etiquette. There seems to be no chilly distance existing between the German students and the professor, but on the contrary a companionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness and reserve. When the professor enters a beer-hall in the evening where students are gathered together, these rise up and take off their caps and invite the old gentleman to sit with them and partake. He accepts, and the pleasant talk and the beer flow for an hour or two. And by and by the professor, properly charged and comfortable, gives a cordial good-night, while the students stand, bowing, and uncovered. And then he moves on his happy-way homeward, with all his vast cargo of learning afloat in his hold. Nobody finds his fault or feels outraged. No harm has been done. It seemed to be a part of corps etiquette to keep a dog or so, too. I mean a corps dog, the common property of the organization, like the corps steward or head-servant. Then there are other dogs owned by individuals. On a summer afternoon in the castle gardens I have seen six students march solemnly into the grounds in single file, each carrying a bright Chinese parasol and leading a prodigious dog by a string. It was a very imposing spectacle. Sometimes there would be as many dogs around the pavilion as students, and of all breeds and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness. These dogs had a rather dry time of it, for they were tied to the benches and had no amusement for an hour or two at a time except what they could get out of pawing at the gnats or trying to sleep and not succeeding. However, they got a lump of sugar occasionally. They were fond of that. It seemed right and proper that students should indulge in dogs, but everybody else had them, too, old men and young ones, old women, and nice young ladies. If there is one spectacle that is unpleasanter than another, it is that of an elegantly dressed young lady towing a dog by a string. It is said to be the sign and symbol of blighted love. It seems to me that some other way of advertising it might be devised, which would be just as conspicuous and yet not so trying to the proprieties. It would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going, pleasure-seeking student carries an empty head. Just the contrary. He has spent nine years in the gymnasium under a system which allowed him no freedom, but vigorously compelled him to work like a slave. Consequently he has left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive and complete that the most a university can do for it is to perfect some of its profounder specialties. It is said that when a student leaves the gymnasium he not only has a comprehensive education, but he knows what he knows. It is not be fogged with uncertainty, it is burned into him so that it will stay. For instance he does not merely read and write Greek, but speaks it, the same with the Latin. Foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium, its rules are too severe. They go to the university to put a mansard roof on their whole general education, but the German student already has his mansard roof, so he goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some specialty such as a particular branch of law or diseases of the eye, or special study of the ancient Gothic tongues. So this German attends only the lectures which belong to the chosen branch and drinks his beer and tows his dog around and has a general good time the rest of the day. He has been in rigid bondage so long that the large liberty of the university life is just what he needs and likes and thoroughly appreciates. And as it cannot last forever, he makes the most of it while it does last, and so lays up a good rest against the day that must see him put on the chains once more and enter the slavery of official or professional life. CHAPTER V. At the student's dueling ground, dueling by wholesale. One day, in the interest of science, my agent obtained permission to bring me to the student's dueling place. We crossed the river and drove up the bank a few hundred yards, then turned to the left, entered a narrow alley, followed it a hundred yards, and arrived at a two-story public house. We were acquainted with its outside aspect for it was visible from the hotel. We went upstairs and passed into a large whitewash department which was perhaps fifty feet long by thirty feet wide and twenty or twenty-five high. It was a well-lighted place. There was no carpet. Across one end and down both sides of the room extended a row of tables. And at these tables some fifty or seventy-five students—footnote one, C, appendix C—were sitting. Some of them were sipping wine. Others were playing cards. Others chess. Other groups were chatting together, and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for the coming duels. Nearly all of them wore colored caps. There were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps, and bright yellow ones. So all the five corps were present in strong force. In the windows at the vacant end of the room stood six or eight narrow-bladed swords, with large protecting guards for the hand, and outside was a man at work sharpening others on a grindstone. He understood his business, for when a sword left his hand one could shave himself with it. It was observable that the young gentleman neither bowed to nor spoke with students whose caps differed in color from their own. This did not mean hostility, but only an armed neutrality. It was considered that a person could strike harder in the duel and with a more earnest interest if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with his antagonist, therefore comradeship between the corps was not permitted. At intervals the presidents of the five corps have a cold official intercourse with each other, but nothing further. For example, when the regular dueling day of one of the corps approaches, its president calls for volunteers from among the membership to offer battle. Three or more respond, but there must not be less than three. The president lays their names before the other presidents, with the request that they furnish antagonists for these challengers from among their corps. This is promptly done. It chanced that the present occasion was the battle day of the Red Cap Corps. They were the challengers, and certain caps of other colors had volunteered to meet them. The students fight duels in the room which I have described two days in every week during seven and a half or eight months in every year. This custom had continued in Germany two hundred and fifty years. To return to my narrative, a student in a white cap met us and introduced us to six or eight friends of his who also wore white caps, and while we stood conversing two strange looking figures were led in from another room. They were students panopled for the duel. They were bareheaded. Their eyes were protected by iron goggles which projected an inch or more, the leather straps of which bound their ears flat against their heads were wound around and around with thick wrappings which a sword could not cut through. From chin to ankle they were padded thoroughly against injury. Their arms were bandaged and rebandaged layer upon layer until they looked like solid black logs. These weird apparitions had been handsome youths clad in fashionable attire fifteen minutes before, but now they did not resemble any beings one ever sees unless at nightmares. They strode along with their arms projecting straight out from their bodies. They did not hold them out themselves, but fellow students walked beside them and gave the needed support. There was a rush for the vacant end of the room now, and we followed and got good places. The combatants were placed face to face each with several members of his own corps about him to assist. Two seconds, well padded and with swords in their hands, took their stations, a student belonging to neither of the opposing corps placed himself in a good position to umpire the combat. Another student stood by with a watch and a memorandum book to keep record of the time and the number and nature of the wounds. A gray-haired surgeon was present with his lint, his bandages, and his instruments. After a moment's pause the dualists saluted the umpire respectfully, then one after another the several officials stepped forward, gracefully removed their caps and saluted him also, and returned to their places. Everything was ready now, students stood crowded together in the foreground, and others stood behind them on chairs and tables. Every face was turned toward the center of attraction. The combatants were watching each other with alert eyes, a perfect stillness, a breathless interest reigned. I felt that I was going to see some wary work. But not so. The instant the word was given the two apparitions sprang forward and began to rain blows down upon each other with such lightning rapidity that I could not quite tell whether I saw the swords or only flashes they made in the air. The rattling din of these blows as they struck steel or paddings was something wonderfully stirring, and they were struck with such terrific force that I could not understand why the opposing sword was not beaten down under the assault. Presently, in the midst of the sword flashes, I saw a handful of hair skip into the air as if it had lain loose on the victim's head, and a breath of wind had puffed it suddenly away. The seconds cried HALT and knocked up the combatant's swords with their own. The dualists sat down. A student official stepped forward, examined the wounded head, and touched the place with a sponge once or twice. The surgeon came and turned back the hair from the wound, and revealed a crimson gash two or three inches long, and proceeded to bind an oval piece of leather and a bunch of lint over it. The tally-keeper stepped up and tallied one for the opposition in his book. Then the dualists took position again. A small stream of blood was flowing down the side of the injured man's head and over his shoulder and down his body to the floor, but he did not seem to mind this. The word was given, and they plunged at each other as fiercely as before. Once more the blows rained and rattled and flashed. Every few moments the quick-eyed seconds would notice that a sword was bent. Then they called HALT, struck up the contending weapons, and an assisting student straightened the bent one. The wonderful turmoil went on. Presently a bright spark sprung from a blade, and that blade, broken in several pieces, sent one of its fragments flying to the ceiling. A new sword was provided and the fight proceeded. The exercise was tremendous, of course, and in time the fighters began to show great fatigue. They were allowed to rest a moment, every little while. They got other rests by wounding each other, for then they could sit down while the doctor applied the lint and bandages. The law is that the battle must continue fifteen minutes if the men can hold out, and as the pauses do not count this duel was protracted to twenty or thirty minutes, I judged. At last it was decided that the men were too much weary to do battle longer. They were led away drenched with crimson from head to foot. That was a good fight, but it could not count, partly because it did not last the lawful fifteen minutes of actual fighting, and partly because neither man was disabled by his wound. It was a drawn battle, and core law requires that drawn battles shall be re-fought as soon as the adversaries are well of their hurts. During the conflict I had talked a little now and then with a young gentleman of the White Cap Corps, and he had mentioned that he was to fight next, and had also pointed out his challenger, a young gentleman who was leaning against the opposite wall smoking a cigarette, and restfully observing the duel then in progress. My acquaintanceship with a party to the coming contest had the effect of giving me a kind of personal interest in it. I naturally wished he might win, and it was the reverse of pleasant to learn that he probably would not, because, although he was a notable swordsman, the challenger was held to be his superior. The duel presently began, and in the same furious way which had marked the previous one. I stood close by, but could not tell which blows told and which did not. They fell and vanished so like flashes of light. They all seemed to tell. The swords always bent over the opponent's heads from the forehead back over the crown, and seemed to touch all the way. But it was not so. A protecting blade, invisible to me, was always interposed between. At the end of ten seconds each man had struck twelve or fifteen blows, and warded off twelve or fifteen, and no harm done. Then a sword became disabled, and a short rest followed whilst a new one was brought. Early in the next round the white-core student got an ugly wound on the side of his head and gave his opponent one like it. In the third round the latter received another bad wound in the head, and the former had his underlip divided. After that the white-core student gave many severe wounds, but got none of the consequence in return. At the end of five minutes from the beginning of the duel the surgeon stopped it. The challenging party had suffered such injuries that any addition to them might be dangerous. These injuries were a fearful spectacle, but are better left undescribed. So against expectation my acquaintance was the victor. CHAPTER VI. A SPORT THAT SOMETIMES KILLS. The third duel was brief and bloody. The surgeon stopped it when he saw that one of the men had received such bad wounds that he could not fight longer without endangering his life. The fourth duel was a tremendous encounter. But at the end of five or six minutes the surgeon interfered once more. Another man so severely hurt has to render it unsafe to add to his harms. I watched this engagement as I watched the others, with rapt interest and strong excitement, and with a shrink and a shutter for every blow that laid open a cheek or a forehead, and a conscious pailing of my face when I occasionally saw a wound of a yet more shocking nature inflicted. My eyes were upon the loser of this duel when he got his last and vanquishing wound. It was in his face, and it carried away his—but no matter, I must not enter into details. I had bet a glance and then turned quickly, but I would not have been looking at all if I had known what was coming. No, that is probably not true. One thinks he would not look if he knew what was coming, but the interest and the excitement are so powerful that they would doubtless conquer all other feelings. And so, under the fierce exhilaration of the clashing steel, he would yield and look after all. Sometimes spectators of these duels faint, and it does seem a very reasonable thing to do, too. Both parties to this fourth duel were badly hurt so much that the surgeon was at work upon them nearly or quite an hour, a fact which is suggestive, but this waiting interval was not wasted in idleness by the assembled students. It was past noon, therefore they ordered their landlord downstairs to send up hot beef steaks, chickens, and such things, and these they ate, sitting comfortable at the several tables, whilst they chatted, disputed, and laughed. The door to the surgeon's room stood open meantime, but the cutting, sewing, splicing, and bandaging going on in there in plain view did not seem to disturb any one's appetite. I went in and saw the surgeon labor a while, but could not enjoy. It was much less trying to see the wounds given and received than to see them mended. The stirrer and turmoil and the music of the steel were wanting here. One's nerves were wrung by this grisly spectacle, whilst the duel's compensating, pleasurable thrill was lacking. Finally the doctor finished, and the men who were to fight the closing battle of the day came forth. A good many dinners were not completed yet, but no matter, they could be eaten cold after the battle, therefore everybody crowded forth to see. This was not a love duel, but a satisfaction affair. These two students had quarreled and were here to settle it. They did not belong to any of the corps, but they were furnished with weapons and armour and permitted to fight here by the five corps as a courtesy. Evidently these two young men were unfamiliar with the dueling ceremonies, though they were not unfamiliar with the sword. When they were placed in position they thought it was time to begin, and they did begin too, and with the most impetuous energy without waiting for anybody to give the word. This vastly amused the spectators and even broke down their studied and courtly gravity and surprised them into laughter. Of course the seconds struck up the swords and started the duel over again. At the word the deluge of blows began, but before long the surgeon once more interfered, for the only reason which ever permits him to interfere, and the day's war was over. It was now two in the afternoon, and I had been present since half past nine in the morning. The field of battle was indeed a red one by this time, but some saw thus soon right at that. There had been one duel before I arrived. In it one of the men received many injuries, while the other one escaped without a scratch. I had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen, two-edged blades, and yet had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan, or detected any fleeting expression which confessed the sharp pain the hurts were inflicting. This was good fortitude indeed. Such endurance is to be expected in savages and prize-fighters, for they are born and educated to it. But to find it in such perfection in these gently-bred and kindly-natured young fellows is matter for surprise. It was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play that this fortitude was shown. It was shown in the surgeon's room where an uninspiring quiet reigned, and where there was no audience. The doctor's manipulations brought out neither grimaces nor groans. And in the fights it was observable that these lads hacked and slashed with the same tremendous spirit after they were covered with streaming wounds which they had shown in the beginning. The world in general looks upon the college duels as very farcical affairs, true but considering that the college duel is fought by boys, that the swords are real swords, and that the head and face are exposed, it seems to me that it is a farce which had quite a grave side to it. People laughed at it mainly because they think the student is so covered up with armor that he cannot be hurt. But it is not so. His eyes and ears are protected, but the rest of his face and head are bare. He can not only be badly wounded, but his life is in danger, and he would sometimes lose it, but for the interference of the surgeon. It is not intended that his life shall be endangered. Fatal accidents are possible, however. For instance, the student's sword may break, and the end of it fly up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which could not be reached if the sword remained whole. This has happened sometimes, and death has resulted on the spot. Formerly the student's armpits were not protected, and at that time the swords were pointed, whereas they are blunt now. So an artery in the armpit was sometimes cut, and death followed. Then, in the days of sharp-pointed swords, a spectator was an occasional victim. The end of a broken sword flew five or ten feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart, and death ensued instantly. The student duels in Germany occasion two or three deaths every year now, but this arises only from the carelessness of the wounded men. They eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the way of overexertion. Inflammation sets in and gets such a headway that it cannot be arrested. Indeed, there is blood and pain and danger enough about the college duels to entitle it to a considerable degree of respect. All the customs, all the laws, all the details pertaining to the student duel are quaint and naive. The grave, precise, and courtly ceremony with which the thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of antique charm. This dignity and these nightly graces suggest the tournament, not the prize fight. The laws are as curious as they are strict. For instance, the dualist may step forward from the line he is placed upon, if he chooses, but never back of it. If he steps back of it or even leans back, it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive an advantage. So he is dismissed from his core in disgrace. It would seem natural to step from under a descending sword unconsciously and against one's will and intent. Yet this unconsciousness is not allowed. Again, if under the sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes a grimace, he falls some degrees in the estimation of his fellows. His core are ashamed of him. They call him Harefoot, which is the German equivalent for chicken-hearted. CHAPTER VII. In addition to the core laws, there are some core usages which have the force of laws. Perhaps the president of a core notices that one of the membership, who is no longer an exempt, that is, a freshman, has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering to fight. Someday the president, instead of calling for volunteers, will appoint this sophomore to measure swords with a student of another core. He is free to decline. Everybody says so. There is no compulsion. This is all true, but I have not heard of any student who did decline. To decline and still remain in the core would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so, since he knew when he joined that his main business as a member would be to fight. No, there is no law against declining, except the law of custom, which is confessibly stronger than written law everywhere. The ten men whose duel I had witnessed did not go away when their hurts were dressed, as I had supposed they would, but came back one after another as soon as they were free of the surgeon and mingled with the assemblage in the dueling-room. The white-cap student, who won the second fight, witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us during the intermissions. He could not talk very well, because his opponent's sword had cut his underlip in two. And then the surgeon had sewed it together and overlaid it with a profusion of white plaster patches. Neither could he eat easily. Still, he can strive to accomplish a slow and troublesome luncheon while the last duel was preparing. The man who was the worst hurt of all played chess while waiting to see this engagement. A good part of his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all the rest of his head was covered and concealed by them. It is said that the student likes to appear on the street and in other public places in this kind of array, and that this predilection often keeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for him. Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the public gardens of Heidelberg. It is also said that the student is glad to get his wounds in the face, because the scars they leave will show so well there. And it is also said that these face wounds are so prized that youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible. It does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted and maintained, nevertheless. I am sure of one thing. Scars are plenty enough in Germany among the young men, and very grim ones they are, too. They crisscross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent and ineffacable. Some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect, and the effect is striking when several such accent the milder ones which form a city map on a man's face. They suggest the burned district, then. We had often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. It transpired that this signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision was reached, duels in which he either whipped or was whipped, for drawn battles do not count. 1. From my diary. Dined in a hotel a few miles up the neck are in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed portrait groups of the Five Core. Some were recent, but many antedated photography and were pictured in lithography. The dates ranged back to forty or fifty years ago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across his breast. In one portrait group, representing, as each of these pictures did, an entire core, I took pains to count the ribbons. There were twenty-seven members, and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge. 1. After a student has received his ribbon he is free. He can cease from fighting, without reproach, except someone insult him. His president cannot appoint him to fight. He can volunteer if he wants to, or remain quiescent, if he prefers to do so. Statistics show that he does not prefer to remain quiescent. They show that the duel has a singular fascination about it somewhere. For these free men, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are always volunteering. A core student told me it was of record that Prince Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when he was in college. So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given him the right to retire from the field. The statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars. Two days in every week are devoted to dueling. The rule is rigid that there must be three duels on each of these days. There are generally more, but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day I was present. Sometimes there are seven or eight. It is insisted that eight duels a week, four for each of the two days, is too low an average to draw a calculation from. But I will reckon from that basis, preferring an understatement to an overstatement of the case. This requires about four hundred and eighty or five hundred dualists a year, for in summer the college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four months and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty students in the university at the time I am writing of, only eighty belong to the five cores, and it is only these cores that do the dueling. Occasionally other students borrow the arms and battleground of the five cores in order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling day. FOOT NOTE TWO They have to borrow the arms because they could not get them elsewhere or otherwise. As I understand it the public authorities all over Germany allow the five cores to keep swords, but do not allow them to use them. This law is rigid. It is only the execution of it that is lax. END OF FOOT NOTE TWO Consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundred and fifty duals a year. This average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty. This large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer. Of course, where there is so much fighting the students make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees them at the tables in the castle grounds using their whips or canes to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about. And between the duals, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were not always idle. Every now and then we heard a succession of the keen hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being put through its paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing. Necessarily this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert occasionally. He becomes famous in his own university. His renown spreads to other universities. He is invited to Göttingen, to fight with a Göttingen expert. If he is victorious he will be invited to other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him. Americans and Englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. A year or two ago the principal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian. He was invited to the various universities and left awake a victory behind him all about Germany, but at last a little student in Strasbourg defeated him. There was formally a student in Heidelberg who had picked up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up under instead of cleaving down from above. While the trick lasted he won in sixteen successive duals in his university, but by that time observers had discovered what his charm was and how to break it, therefore his championship ceased. A rule which forbids social intercourse between members of different corps is strict. In the dueling house, in the parks, on the street, and anywhere and everywhere that the students go, caps of a color group themselves together. If all the tables in a public garden were crowded but one, and that one had two red cap students at it and ten vacant places, the yellow caps, the blue caps, the white caps, and the green caps, seeking seeds would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor seem to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. The student, by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit the dueling place, wore the white cap, Prussian corps. He introduced us to many white caps but to none of another color. The corps etiquette extended even to us, who were strangers, and required us to group with the white corps only and speak only with the white corps while we were their guests, and keep aloof from the caps of the other colors. Once I wished to examine some of the swords, but an American student said, It would not be quite polite. These now in the windows all have red hilts or blue. They will bring in some with white hilts presently, and those you can handle freely. When a sword was broken in the first duel, I wanted a piece of it, but its hilt was the wrong color, so it was considered best and politest to await a properer season. It was brought to me after the room was cleared, and I will now make a life-size sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen, to show the width of the weapon. Figure one. The length of these swords is about three feet, and they are quite heavy. One's disposition to cheer during the course of the duels or at their close was naturally strong, but corps etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort. However brilliant a contest or a victory might be, no sign or sound betrayed that any one was moved. A dignified gravity and repression were maintained at all times. When the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, the gentlemen of the Prussian corps to whom we had been introduced took off their caps in the courteous German way and also shook hands. Their brethren of the same order took off their caps and bowed, but without shaking hands. The gentlemen of the other corps treated us just as they would have treated white caps. They fell apart, apparently unconsciously, and left us an unobstructed pathway, but did not seem to see us or know we were there. If we had gone thither the following week as guests of another corps, the white caps, without meaning any offense, would have observed the etiquette of their order and ignored our presence. How strangely our comedy and tragedy blended in this life! I had not been home a full half-hour after witnessing those playful sham duels, when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist personally at a real one, a duel with no effeminate limitation in the matter of results, but a battle to the death! An account of it in the next chapter will show the reader that duels between boys for fun and duels between men in earnest are very different affairs. END OF CHAPTER VIII. Much as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous institutions of our day, since it is always fought in the open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold. Monsieur Paul de Casagnac, the most inveterate of the French duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at last a confirmed invalid. And the best physician in Paris has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for fifteen or twenty years more, unless he forms the habit of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and drafts cannot intrude, he will eventually endanger his life. This ought to moderate the talk of those people who are so stubborn in maintaining that the French duel is the most health giving of recreations because of the open air exercise it affords. And it ought also to moderate that foolish talk about French duelists and socialist-hated monarchs being the only people who are immoral. But it is time to get at my subject. As soon as I heard of the late fiery outbreak between Monsieur Gambetta and Monsieur Foutou in the French assembly, I knew that trouble must follow. I knew it because a long personal friendship with Monsieur Gambetta revealed to me the desperate and implacable nature of the man. Vast are his physical proportions. I knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate to the remotest frontiers of his person. I did not wait for him to call on me, but went at once to him. As I had expected, I found the brave fellow steeped in a profound French calm. I say French calm, because French calmness and English calmness have points of difference. He was moving swiftly back and forth among the debris of his furniture, now and then staving chants fragments of it across the room with his foot, grinding a constant grist of curses through his set teeth, and halting every little while to deposit another handful of his hair on the pile which he had been building of it on the table. He threw his arms around my neck, bent me over his stomach to his breast, kissed me on both cheeks, hugged me four or five times, and then placed me in his own arm chair. As soon as I had got well again we began business at once. I said I supposed he would wish me to act as his second, and he said, of course. I said I must be allowed to act under a French name, so that I might be shielded from obliquy in my country, in case of fatal results. He winced here, probably at the suggestion that dueling was not regarded with respect in America. However he agreed to my requirement. This accounts for the fact that in all the newspaper reports Monsieur Gambetta's second was apparently a Frenchman. First we drew up my principal's will. I insisted upon this, and stuck to my point. I said I had never heard of a man in his right mind going out to fight a duel without first making his will. He said he had never heard of a man in his right mind doing anything of the kind. When he had finished the will he wished to proceed to a choice of his last words. He wanted to know how the following words as a dying exclamation struck me. I die for my God, for my country, for freedom of speech, for progress, and the universal brotherhood of man. I objected that this would require too lingering a death. It was a good speech for a consumptive, but not suited to the exigencies of the field of honour. We wrangled over a good many anti-mortem outbursts, but I finally got him to cut his obituary down to this, which he copied into his memorandum book, proposing to get it by heart. I die that France might live. I said that this remark seemed to lack relevancy, but he said relevancy was a matter of no consequence in last words. What you wanted was thrill. The next thing in order was the choice of weapons. My principal said he was not feeling well and would leave that and the other details of the proposed meeting to me. Therefore, I wrote the following note and carried it to Monsieur Fortu's friend. Sir, Monsieur Gambetta accepts Monsieur Fortu's challenge and authorizes me to propose Plessy-Piquette as the place of meeting, tomorrow morning at daybreak as the time, and Axes as the weapons. I am, sir, with great respect, Mark Twain. Monsieur Fortu's friend read this note and shuddered. Then he turned to me and said, with a suggestion of severity in his tone, Have you considered, sir, what would be the inevitable result of such a meeting as this? Well, for instance, what would it be? Bloodshed! That's about the size of it, I said. Now, if it is a fair question, what was your side proposing to shed? I had him there. He saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened to explain it away. He said he had spoken justingly. Then he added that he and his principal would enjoy Axes and indeed prefer them, but such weapons were barred by the French Code, and so I must change my proposal. I walked the floor, turning the thing over in my mind, and finally it occurred to me that gattling guns at fifteen paces would be a likely way to get a verdict on the field of honour, so I framed this idea into a proposition. But it was not accepted. The Code was in the way again. I proposed rifles, then double-barrelled shotguns, then Colt's Navy revolvers. These being all rejected, I reflected a while and sarcastically suggested brick-bats at three quarters of a mile. I always hate to fool away a humorous thing on a person who has no perception of humour, and it filled me with bitterness when this man went soberly away to submit the last proposition to his principal. He came back presently and said his principal was charmed with the idea of brick-bats at three quarters of a mile, but must decline on account of the danger to disinterested parties passing between them. Then I said, Well, I am at the end of my string now. Perhaps you would be good enough to suggest a weapon. Perhaps you have even had one in your mind all the time. His countenance brightened, and he said with lacquery, Oh! without a doubt, monsieur! So he fell to hunting his pockets, pocket after pocket, and he had plenty of them, muttering all the while. Now, what could I have done with them? At last he was successful. He fished out of his vest pocket a couple of little things which I carried to the light, and ascertained to be pistols. They were single-barreled and silver-mounted, and very dainty and pretty. I was not able to speak for emotion. I silently hung one of them on my watch-chain and returned the other. My companion in crime now unrolled a postage stamp containing several cartridges, and gave me one of them. I asked if he meant to signify by this that our men were to be allowed but one shot apiece. He replied that the French code permitted no more. I then begged him to go and suggest a distance, for my mind was growing weak and confused under the strain which had been put upon it. He named sixty-five yards. I nearly lost my patience. I said sixty-five yards with these instruments. Squirt guns would be deadlier at fifty. Consider, my friend, you and I are banded together to destroy life, not make it eternal. But with all my persuasions, all my arguments, I was only able to get him to reduce the distance to thirty-five yards, and even this concession he made with reluctance, and said with a sigh, I wash my hands of this slaughter! On your head be it! There was nothing for me but to go home to my old lion-heart and tell my humiliating story. When I entered, Monsieur Gambetta was laying his last lock of hair upon the altar. He sprang toward me, exclaiming, You have made the fatal arrangements! I see it in your eye! I have. His face paled a trifle, and he leaned upon the table for support. He breathed thick and heavily for a moment or two, so tumultuous were his feelings. Then he hoarsely whispered, Zee Weapon! Zee Weapon! Crick! What is Zee Weapon? This, and I displayed that silver-mounted thing. He cast but one glance at it, then swooned ponderously to the floor. When he came to, he said mournfully, The unnatural calm to which I have subjected myself as told upon my nerves, but away with weakness, I will confront my fate like a man and a Frenchman. He rose to his feet and assumed an attitude which, for sublimity, has never been approached by man and has seldom been surpassed by statues. Then he said, in his deep bass tones, Behold, I am calm. I am ready. Reveal to me the distance. Thirty-five yards. I could not lift him up, of course, but I rolled him over and poured water down his back. He presently came to and said, Thirty-five yards! Without a rest? But why ask? Since murder was that man's intention, why should he paltre with small details? But marky one thing, in my fall the world shall see how the chivalry of France meets death. After a long silence he asked, Was nothing said about that man's family standing up with him as an offset to my bulk? But no matter. I would not stoop to make such a suggestion. If he is not noble enough to suggest it himself, he is welcome to disadvantage, which no honourable man would take. He now sank into a sort of stupor of reflection which lasted some minutes, after which he broke silence with the hour. What is the hour fixed for the collision? Dawn tomorrow. He seemed greatly surprised and immediately said, Insanity! I never heard of such a thing. Nobody is abroad at such an hour. That is the reason I named it. Do you mean to say you want an audience? It is no time to ban the words. I am astonished that Monsieur Foutou should ever have agreed to so strange an innovation. Go at once and require a later hour. I ran downstairs through open the front door and almost plunged into the arms of Monsieur Foutou's second. He said, I have the honour to say that my principle strenuously objects to the hour chosen and begs you will consent to change it to half-past nine. Any courtesy, sir, which it is in our power to extend, is at the service of your excellent principle. We agree to the proposed change of time. I beg you to accept the thanks of my client, then he turned to a person behind him and said, You hear, Monsieur Noir, the hour is altered to half-past nine, whereupon Monsieur Noir bowed, expressed his thanks, and went away. My accomplice continued, If agreeable to you, your chief surgeons and ours shall proceed to the field in the same carriage as his customary. It is entirely agreeable to me, and I am obliged to you for mentioning the surgeons, for I am afraid I should not have thought of them. How many shall I want? I suppose two or three will be enough. Two is the customary number for each party. I refer to chief surgeons, but considering the exalted positions occupied by our clients it will be well and decorous that each of us appoint several consulting surgeons from among the highest in the profession. These will come in their own private carriages. Have you engaged a hearse? My blessed stupidity, I never thought of it. I will attend to it right away. I must seem very ignorant to you, but you must try to overlook that, because I have never had any experience of such a swell duel as this before. I have had a good deal to do with duels on the Pacific coast, but I see now that they were crude affairs. A hearse, we used to leave the elected lying around loose and let anybody cord them up and cart them off that wanted to. Have you anything further to suggest? Nothing, except that the head undertakers shall ride together, as is usual. The subordinates and mutes will go on foot, as is also usual. I will see you at eight o'clock in the morning, and we will then arrange the order of the procession. I have the honour to bid you a good day. I return to my client who said, very well, at what hour is the engagement to begin? Half past nine. Very good indeed. Have you sent the fact to the newspapers? Sir, if after our long and intimate friendship you can for a moment deem me capable of so base a treachery. What words are these, my dear friend? Have I wounded you? Ah, forgive me. I am overloading you with labour. Therefore go on with the other details, and drop this one from your list. The bloody-minded fortune will be sure to attend to it. Or I myself, yes, to make certain. I will drop a note to my journalistic friend, Monsieur Noire. Oh! I will come to think of it. You may save yourself the trouble. That other second has informed Monsieur Noire. I might have known it. It is just like that fortune who always wants to make a display. At half past nine in the morning the procession approached the field of Plessy-Piquette in the following order. First came our carriage, nobody in it but Monsieur Gambetta and myself, then a carriage containing Monsieur two and his second, then a carriage containing two poet orators who did not believe in God, and these had manuscript funeral orations projecting from their breast pockets, then a carriage containing the head surgeons and their cases of instruments, then eight private carriages containing consultant surgeons, then a hack containing a coroner, then the two herces, then a carriage containing the head undertakers, then a train of assistants and mutes on foot, and after these came plodding through the fog a long procession of camp followers, police, and citizens generally. It was a noble turnout and would have made a fine display if we had had thinner weather. There was no conversation. I spoke several times to my principal, but I judge he was not aware of it, for he always referred to his notebook and muttered absently, I die that France might live. Arrived on the field, my fellow second and I paced off the thirty-five yards, and then drew lots for choice of position. This latter was but an ornamental ceremony for all the choices were alike in such weather. These preliminaries being ended, I went to my principal and asked him if he was ready. He spread himself out to his full width and said in a stern voice, Ready! Let the batteries be charged! The loading process was done in the presence of duly constituted witnesses. We considered it best to perform this delicate service with the assistance of a lantern, on account of the state of the weather. We now placed our men. At this point the police noticed that the public had masked themselves together on the right and left of the field. They therefore begged a delay while they should put these poor people in a place of safety. The request was granted. The police, having ordered the two multitudes to take positions behind the dualists, we were once more ready. The weather, growing still more opaque, it was agreed between myself and the other second that before giving the fatal signal we should each deliver a loud whoop to enable the combatants to ascertain each other's whereabouts. I now returned to my principle, and was distressed to observe that he had lost a good deal of his spirit. I tried my best to hearten him. I said, Indeed, sir, things are not as bad as they seem, considering the character of the weapons, the limited number of shots allowed, the generous distance, the impenetrable solidity of the fog, and the added fact that one of the combatants is one-eyed, and the other cross-eyed and nearsighted. It seems to me that this conflict need not necessarily be fatal. There are chances that both of you may survive. Therefore cheer up, do not be downhearted. This speech had so good an effect that my principle immediately stretched forth his hand and said, I am myself again, give me easy weapon. I laid it all lonely and forlorn in the center of the vast solitude of his palm. He gazed at it and shuddered, and still mournfully contemplating it. He murmured in a broken voice, Alas, it is not death that I dread, but mutilation. I heartened him once more, and with such success that he presently said, Let the tragedy begin. Stand at my back. Do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend. I gave him my promise. I now assisted him to point his pistol toward the spot where I judged his adversary to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and further guide himself by my fellow-seconds whoop. Then I propped myself against Monsieur Gambetta's back and raised a rousing whoopee. This was answered from out the far distances of the fog, and I immediately shouted, One, two, three, fire! Two little sounds like pfft, pfft. Broke upon my ear, and in the same instant I was crushed to the earth under a mountain of flesh. Bruised as I was, I was still able to catch a faint accent from above to this effect. I die for, for! Perdition, take it! What is it I die for? Oh, yes, France! I die that France may live! The surgeons swarmed around with their probes in their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole area of Monsieur Gambetta's person, with a happy result of finding nothing in the nature of a wound. Then a scene ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting. The two gladiators fell upon each other's neck, with floods of proud and happy tears. That other second embraced me. The surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with joy unspeakable. Seems to me then that I would rather be a hero of a French duel than a crowned and septored monarch. When the commotion had somewhat subsided, the body of surgeons held a consultation, and after a good deal of debate decided that with proper care and nursing there was reason to believe that I would survive my injuries. My internal hurts were deemed the most serious since it was apparent that a broken rib had penetrated my left lung, and that many of my organs had been pressed out so far to one side or the other, of where they belonged, that it was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform their functions in such remote and unaccustomed localities. They then set my left arm in two places, pulled my right hip into its socket again, and re-elevated my nose. I was an object of great interest and even admiration, and many sincere and warm-hearted persons had themselves introduced to me, and said they were proud to know the only man who had been hurt in a French duel in forty years. I was placed in an ambulance at the very head of the procession, and thus, with gratifying éclat, I was marched into Paris, the most conspicuous figure in that great spectacle, and deposited at the hospital. The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred upon me. However, few escaped that distinction. Such is the true version of the most memorable private conflict of the age. I have no complaints to make against any one. I acted for myself, and I can stand the consequences. Without boasting, I think I may say I am not afraid to stand before a modern French duelist, but as long as I keep in my right mind, I will never consent to stand behind one again. CHAPTER VIII. One day we took the train and went down to Mannheim to see King Leer played in German. It was a mistake. We sat in our seats three whole hours and never understood anything but the thunder and lightning, and even that was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came first, and the lightning followed after. The behavior of the audience was perfect. There was no rustlings, or whisperings, or other little disturbances. Each act was listened to in silence, and the applauding was done after the curtain was down. The doors opened at half past four, the play began promptly at half past five, and within two minutes afterward all who were coming were in their seats and quiet reigned. A German gentleman in the train had said that a Shakespearean play was an appreciated treat in Germany, and that we should find the house filled. It was true. All the six tiers were filled, and remained so to the end, which suggested that it is not only balcony people who like Shakespeare in Germany, but those of the pit and gallery too. Another time we went to Mannheim and attended a chivalry, otherwise an opera, the one called Loengrin. The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and pitiless pain of it remained stored up in my memory, alongside the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed. There were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through the four hours to the end, and I stayed. But the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. To have to endure it in silence and sitting still made it all the harder. I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers of the two sexes, and this compelled repression. Yet at times the pain was so exquisite that I could hardly keep the tears back. At those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking of the singers, and the raging and roaring and explosions of the vast orchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone. Those strangers would not have been surprised to see a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned, but they would have marvelled at it here and made remarks about it, no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being skinned. There was a weight of half an hour at the end of the first act, and I could have gone out and rested during that time, but I could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I should desert and stay out. There was another weight of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had gone through so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no desire but to be let alone. I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me for, indeed, they were not. Whether it was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it, I did not at the time know, but they did like it, this was plain enough. While it was going on, they sat and looked as wrapped and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs, and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. Of course, there were many people there who were not under compulsion to stay, yet the tears were as full at the close as they had been at the beginning. This showed that the people liked it. It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough, but there was not much action. That is to say, there was not much really done. It was only talked about, and all was violently. It was what one might call a narrative play. Everybody had a narrative and a grievance, and none were reasonable about it, but all in an offensive and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down by the footlights warbling with blended voices, and keep holding out their arms toward each other and drawing them back and spreading both hands over first one breast, and then the other with a shake and a pressure. No, it was every rider for himself and no blending. Each sang his indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by the whole orchestra of sixty instruments, and when this had continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived over again all that I suffered the time the orphan asylum burned down. We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproduction of the other place. This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around and around in a third act and sang the wedding chorus. To my untutored ear that was music, almost divine music. While my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that I could almost re-suffer the torments which had gone before in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep ingenuity of the operatic mind is betrayed. It deals so largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere. I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans like so much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. This is a legitimate result of habit and education. Our nation will like the opera too, by and by, no doubt. One in fifty of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think good many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbours may perceive that they have been to operas before. The funerals of these do not occur often enough. A gentle old madish person and a sweet young girl of seventeen sat right in front of us that night at the Mannheim Opera. These people talked between the acts, and I understood them, though I understood nothing that was uttered on the distant stage. At first they were guarded in their talk, but after they had heard my agent and me conversing in English they dropped their reserve and I picked up many of their little confidences—now, I mean, many of her little confidences, meaning the elder party, for the young girl only listened and gave a senting nods, and never said a word. How pretty she was and how sweet she was. I wished she would speak, but evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, her own young girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure in silence. But she was not dreaming sleepy dreams—no, she was awake, alive, alert! She could not sit still a moment. She was an enchanting study. Her gown was of a soft, white, silky stuff that clung to her round young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled over with the gracefulest little fringy films of lace. She had deep, tender eyes, with long curved lashes, and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such a dear little rosebud of a mouth, and she was so dove-like, so pure and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching. For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak, and at last she did. The red lips parted, and how it leaps her thought, and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm too. Auntie, I just know I've got five hundred fleas on me! That was probably over the average. Yes, it must have been very much over the average. The average at that time in the grand duchy of Baden was forty-five to a young person, when alone, according to the official estimate of the home secretary for that year. The average for older people was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a wholesome young girl came into the presence of her elders, she immediately lowered their average and raised her own. She became a sort of contribution-box. This dear young thing in the theatre had been sitting there unconsciously taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in our neighbourhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming. In that large audience that night there were eight very conspicuous people. These were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. What a blessed thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in our theatres by wearing her hat. It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies and gentlemen to take bonnets, hats, overcoats, canes, or umbrellas into the auditorium. But in Mannheim this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely made up of people from a distance. And among these were always a few timid ladies who were afraid that if they had to go into an anti-room to get their things when the play was over, they would miss the train. But the great mass of those who came from a distance always ran the risk and took the chances, preferring the loss of a train to a breach of good manners and the discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or four hours.