Chapter IV: Part 4

The great amusement of tourists who come to Switzerland is mountain-climbing. I have learned the game. Men and women come in at night recounting the wonderful feats they have accomplished and the dangers they have escaped. Everybody carries an “alpenstock,” which is a sharp-pointed cane with a chamois handle, and whenever he climbs a peak he has a ring burned around the stick, and shows it as proudly as the Indian once did the notches which meant deaths of enemies. I am a little skeptical, and listen to the climbing stories as I do to fish stories at home. It is too much like golf where you keep your own count. Perhaps I shall yield to the demands of environment enough to get me an alpenstock and have a few rings burned in it so I can have a few chips in the game, as it were. The men run to knickerbockers, wear feathers in their hats and carry packs on their shoulders. The women wear short skirts which don’t hang well and big shoes with nails in the soles—I am speaking now of people who do the thing right, and not those who sit on the porch and loaf.

The Swiss themselves are degenerating from the simple-hearted people they were. They have fallen before the temptations of the tourists. They see the American and the Englishman with lots of money to spend, and they find it easier to separate the stranger from his cash than they do to hunt chamois and herd cattle. It is a cause of much regret to the intelligent Swiss that this is so, but I do not notice the intelligent mourners going out into the mountains and setting an example of industry. They sell the jewelry, the souvenirs, the milk and the wine at advanced prices, and they have the greatest number of hotels and boarding-houses of any country on earth. If you enjoy handsome little shops with trinkets and gew-gaws, jewelry and picture cards, carved wood and imitation stones, as I do, you would thoroughly enjoy wandering through Geneva. The Geneva artisan will take a chair-leg and make a musical instrument. Sit down on a sofa and you will be startled to hear a piece of Wagner’s played by the concealed music-box.

The language spoken in Geneva is French. I do not think it is good French, for the people here do not understand the French with the fine Parisian accent I brought from Paris. But a large proportion of the people understand English. I am of the opinion that in spite of the fact that French is still the international language in Europe, the one you can use with educated people nearly anywhere, the English-American is the coming language. Very few people in Europe travel. The Germans do so more than others, but the French seldom do, the Italians rarely, and the Spanish and the Russians practically never. The English come to the continent in great numbers, and the Americans are in droves. In a place like Geneva in the principal shops and on the promenades you would say that fully half the people were English-speaking. In order to take care of these profitable guests the Swiss and others are learning enough of the language to sell them cheap goods at high prices, and they will learn more. It is not an uncommon experience to go into a store and after laboriously constructing a question in alleged French to get an answer in very fair English.

I am told that up to a few years ago the American traveler was regarded with a little contempt by the people of continental Europe, and considered as only so much soil from which to gather wealth. But Americans of experience tell me that since the war with Spain all this has changed. As for myself, these Europeans have always spoken in the friendliest way of America, even when they did not know there were any Yankees around. The theory that we were only a commercial people and would not fight (the world loves a fighter) was disproven so thoroughly that they have rather gone to the other extreme, and Americans are now very popular as Americans and not merely for their money. Europe also has the highest opinion of McKinley and Roosevelt. With a great deal of pride in my heart I read a leading editorial in the London Times saying that Roosevelt’s letter to Russia and Japan urging peace was one of the greatest of state papers. The Times added that it was “straightforward, frank and clear—the American idea of diplomacy.” All of Europe now regards America as a great and friendly power, and an American swells up considerably more over his country when he is in other nations than he does at home, where he is apt to get fussy and cynical. The English are not popular on the continent, though England is feared and respected. The Americans are liked because they are believed to be fair and square.

At the other end of Lake Geneva is the castle of Chillon. It is about as big as the court-house in Hutchinson, and looks like the old sugar-mill, only more so. Byron did a great deal for the people in that neck of the woods, for his poem made the castle famous, and tourists come by the hundreds and buy. In return they have named the big hotel the Byron, which shows they are not ungrateful. Byron’s poem had the poor prisoner confined in a dungeon with two brothers, and he had the torture of seeing them die. The facts are that there never was any “prisoner of Chillon” except in the brilliant imagination of Lord Byron. Of course many prisoners were confined in the dungeon. Every castle in Europe has a dungeon, and none of them were constructed with an idea of sanitary conditions or the health of the prisoners. But the dungeon at Chillon is the lightest and airiest dungeon I have seen. It is as comfortable as a good many hotel rooms in the United States. The only prisoner of note that had any such experience was a preacher named Bonnivard, who was kept there for two years because he believed or didn’t believe in Calvin,—I have forgotten which it was. Bonnivard had no brothers, and lived a number of years afterward and said he enjoyed his confinement at Chillon because he had so much time to think. Our guide showed our party the pathway the prisoner’s feet had worn in the rock where he had walked back and forth within the limit of his chains. I couldn’t see the path, although everybody else did. The rest of the castle of Chillon is very interesting, as it was the residence of a fine line of dukes who were always fighting either for or against the king. Our guide, who spoke only French, told us all about it, but I shall not repeat what she said. The people of Hutchinson would not understand her remarks any better than I did.

My idea of a good joke is to have a guide who can only talk French tell an American who can’t understand French something very important or serious. The Frenchman tells his story with rapidity, earnestness and gestures. The American listens with frank impatience and punctuates the French sentences with American ejaculations which have no connection with the subject. The Frenchman acts mad, but he isn’t at all. The American acts pleasant, but he is really mad.

The castle of Chillon is in the lake, about sixty feet from the shore. You reach the entrance over a bridge after fighting your way through the sellers of souvenirs. That is one thing the old dukes did not have to contend with. If they were still doing business I think they would fill up the dungeon with the salesmen and salesladies.

SOMETHING OF SWITZERLAND.

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, July 12, 1905.

Switzerland is a succession of beautiful lakes, mountains and big hotels, dotted here and there with manufacturing towns and vineyards. It has been said that you cannot get too much of a good thing, but that is a mistake. Even the man who loves pie must admit that after he has had all the pie he can consume three times a day for a week, he would want to change the subject. After one has been traveling through Swiss scenery for seven days he is almost satisfied. We no longer chase across the car to see a big mountain-peak, or hurry out of the hotel soon after our arrival to behold the lake. And men and women with feathers in their hats and alpenstocks in their hands do not make us turn our heads. The sight of a little level country would look mighty good, and a comfortable seat on the porch comes nearer to filling the longing in my heart than the sight of a waterfall or an old castle several minutes’ walk distant.

Lucerne is the center of the tourist travel. All roads into Switzerland lead to Lucerne, and the scenery is more varied than at any other of the show places. The town is on the lake and the mountains are around it. From my hotel I could see Mount Pilatus, the place where they say Pontius Pilate finally found a resting-place. At the other end of the view is the snow-covered Rigi, and there are all kinds of Alps in the background. Lucerne looks like an American summer resort. It is made up of hotels and souvenir shops, and elegantly dressed women parade up and down the promenade walks, while rich old gentlemen sit uncomfortably around the piazzas and wish the women-folks had let them stay at home. It is astonishing how many men act as if they would give a good deal to be at work somewhere rather than in Switzerland “enjoying themselves.” A lot of people do not know how to have a good time or how to see a strange and delightful place. I meet many people who do not care for Europe, or Italy, or Switzerland,—the people who bring a stack of trunks and good clothes and have to put in their time dressing up only to be out-dressed by somebody else.

But Lucerne has one thing different. It is the “Lion of Lucerne,” the monument erected in honor of the Swiss soldiers who died in the French palace defending the rotten Bourbon dynasty when the revolutionists broke in and captured the king and queen. The lion (twenty-eight feet in length) is carved out of a sandstone ledge, and is the finest monument or statue I ever saw. The king of beasts is dying, agony on his face, a broken lance in his side, and his huge paw resting on a shield of the lilies of France. The more I looked at the great work of Thorwaldsen the more I felt it, and I went back again and again to see it,—the real test of effect. Nearly everyone has seen copies or pictures of this work, but it is one of the things that no copy can do justice to, for the size and substance of the stone, the pathos and power of the subject and the skill and the genius of the sculptor have met most perfectly and impressively.

Near Lucerne is the scene of the early struggle for Swiss liberty. Around the lake of Lucerne are the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, whose representatives met some 500 years ago and entered into the compact to stand together for freedom, a compact which has never been broken. Here William Tell refused to take off his hat to the hat the tyrant Gessler had set up and ordered all to salute. To punish Tell the governor ordered him to take his bow and arrow and shoot an apple from the head of his son. Tell’s aim was true, but as he turned away another arrow dropped from his coat. When asked why he had that, he said it was for Gessler if the boy had been hurt. Gessler took Tell in a boat and was carrying him to a dungeon, when a storm arose and Tell was released in order to use his skill as a boatman. He knew that the world wasn’t big enough for both himself and Gessler, so he soon after inserted an arrow into the tyrant’s ribs, and the Austrians had to get a new governor.

Some cynical historians doubt this Tell story, but I do not. It is just as good a story as a lot which appear in history and it is good enough to be true.

After the Tell revolution, which was in the thirteenth century, those Swiss cantons never lost their freedom, although they had to fight for it about every generation. The Hapsburg family, which reigned in Austria, was always trying to conquer the Swiss, and although its power was great enough to overcome any army they could collect, it could not cope with the mountains and gulches in which the Swiss were at home, and where one man who knew the land was equal in fighting value to a dozen knights in armor or on horseback. On that account the Swiss, especially the people of these “forest cantons,” have been a free people through all the changes in the world during more than 500 years. Sometimes they have been selfish and narrow in their ideas of freedom, considering that they were the only people on earth, and they have until the last century held serfs and domineered despotically over weak neighbors. But they were always far in advance of the rest of the world in their ideas of personal liberty. Switzerland is the one country which has always been a refuge to exiled patriots, rebels, conspirators and pretenders. Switzerland will not surrender a fugitive from another country on a political charge. The judges who sentenced Charles I. of England to death sought refuge in Switzerland when Charles II. came to the throne. Charles demanded that the judges be given up to him, and brought every influence to bear, but the Swiss stood by their law of refuge. To-day the anarchists and nihilists of Russia and the revolutionists of every country from Roumania to Spain have their headquarters in Geneva or some other Swiss town.

It will be noticed that I think a good deal of the Swiss, and that I have written some criticism of the Italians. I went through Italy without ever being overcharged, “held up,” or worked by cab-drivers, hotel-keepers, or anyone at all. But in Switzerland, the land of freedom and education, I have had all these things done to me. I have been surprised and pleased by the way the people of Europe treat strangers, even if they do want tips. I had not been meanly treated from the time I left Boston until I reached Switzerland. The last man I did business with in my native land was a Boston hackman, who charged me twice what he should when he brought us to the ship. I did not meet his equal until I got to Lucerne. I hope there is no connection between personal liberty, republican government, and the swindling of strangers.

Yesterday we went to St. Gallen, a little industrial town near Constance. The women will recognize the name of this town if the men do not, for it is the place Swiss embroideries come from. I found out one thing there: Most of the Swiss hand embroidery is made by machinery. The Swiss are called the Yankees of Europe. They are up to almost all the tricks of the trade. They are changing from a pastoral and agricultural people, except right in the mountains, and are making money out of manufactories and tourists. The men and women do not wear the ridiculous and charming peasant costumes, except in beer-gardens and summer-resort hotels. In fact, I am impressed with the sameness of people’s clothes everywhere. There is no longer any such thing as characteristic costume. I saw the men’s clothes in Italy all cut and made just as in France, England, or America. The women have the same styles in the country districts of Switzerland that they do in Kansas or in Paris. Of course some people know how to wear their clothes better than others, and there is a difference in fit and make, but the styles are the same from Hutchinson to St. Gallen.

I am learning some things in geography. Mont Blanc, the biggest mountain in Switzerland, is in France. Constance, one of the best Swiss resorts, is in Germany. Switzerland is such a busy little country that it bulges out all around.

SWISS AND SWITZERLAND.

NEUHAUSEN, SWITZERLAND, July 13, 1905.

Soon after I arrived in Switzerland I inquired at a Geneva hotel the name of the President of the Republic of Switzerland. The hall porter (about the same as chief clerk) could not tell me, nor could he find out on inquiry around the office. Several times in Geneva I asked the same question, but always in vain. One or two men thought they knew, but they were not sure, and, as I learned afterward, they guessed wrong. I kept at the work of finding out who was the chief executive until I reached Lucerne. In a bookstore there my question aroused the interest of the proprietor, who spoke good English, and he inquired around until he found out that the President of Switzerland is named Brenner. During the process I suppose I asked a dozen educated Swiss, and three-fourths of them could give me promptly the name of the President of the United States, but not the name of their own President. Of course there is a reason for what would be fearful ignorance in any other country. The President of Switzerland doesn’t amount to as much as the Vice-President of the United States, and it would stagger a good many Americans to tell who was Vice-President before Roosevelt. Switzerland is a rather loosely bound together confederation of cantons (states). The cantons are jealous of the federal government, and give it very little power. Up to a few years ago there would be tariffs in some cantons against importations from others. The general government has the power to do the international business, but Switzerland keeps out of European politics. It would have little or no power as an offensive nation with its three million of people, and so it contents itself with furnishing scenery, wine, watches, music-boxes and good air to the inhabitants of other countries who are able to buy. The federal government consists of a congress composed of representatives from the cantons made up like our Senate and House. This congress elects an executive committee of seven, and the President of Switzerland is merely the chairman of that executive committee. Berne is the capital of Switzerland and the congress meets there, but it can only propose important legislation, which is then submitted to the people, who usually defeat it. The cantons of Switzerland have various kinds of republican government. Some have legislatures, some councils, and in a few of the small ones, where it is practicable, the government acts by mass meetings of the people, with an executive or a committee to carry out the legislation. The small area of the country and of the twenty-two cantons (they average about the size of Reno county, but some are not bigger than a commissioner district) makes the government a peculiar proposition. There is no foreign immigration, no uneducated class, and no one whose ancestors have not been self-governing for a generation. And yet as they have remodeled their local and federal constitutions and charters, they have come closer to the American methods all the time, the only important difference being the initiative and referendum, which is after all only a continuance of their ancient “land gemeinde,” or mass meetings of the people at which measures were considered and officers elected, the voting now being done by ballot instead of holding up the hands.

As I have written before, in some cantons the people use one language and in some another. Likewise in some everybody is a Protestant and in others everybody is a Catholic; very seldom both faiths in one canton. During the Reformation and for a number of years afterward the Swiss fought and killed each other for the love of God as fiercely as in any other country. Switzerland and southern Germany, which borders on it, were the fields in which the great Reformers did their best and worst work. The Reformation in Switzerland was double-headed. One branch, led by Calvin, was marked by what we call Puritan austerity, and had its headquarters at Geneva. From there went John Knox to Scotland and a host of eminent preachers to England and other countries, forming what is now called the Presbyterian Church. Zwingli, at Zurich, was a milder, gentler teacher, and his kind of Protestantism grew most in Switzerland. Luther, only a little way off, had still another kind of Protestantism, and each of the three differed considerably in confession of faith, Calvin standing on the principle of predestination, Luther holding to transubstantiation, or the doctrine of the actual presence of the body of our Saviour in communion, Zwingli insisting that communion was only symbolic. Mutual friends brought Zwingli and Luther together, and when they could not agree, Zwingli held out his hand in parting and Luther would not even shake hands. Zwingli was killed in a battle in a religious war with the Catholics, but his creed really became the dominant one in Swiss Protestantism. Calvin had Servetus burned to death because he denied the trinity.

So you see in the good old days in Switzerland there was a hard time for the plain and honest person trying to do what was right. Those times are past now, and Protestant and Catholic cantons get along peaceably; but there is still friction. Each canton in Switzerland looks after its educational matters and there are good schools everywhere. In nearly every city is a big university. I suppose that in proportion to population there are more university graduates in Switzerland than in any other country on earth. In America the young men and women too often cut short their education in order to get into business. In Switzerland, there are no such alluring opportunities, and the students stay till graduation. A young Swiss will go through the university and then go to work at the trade of his father. In America the young man would want to “do better” and really does worse by becoming a lawyer or an editor. Even good things have their bad features, and American colleges make mighty poor professional men out of material which was intended for good mechanics and farmers.

We spent a couple of days in Zurich, the largest city of Switzerland. Its special industry is silk-making, and the silk and embroidery stores are beautiful. The main business street of Zurich has two rows of trees like First avenue in Hutchinson, and the result is a delightful change from the usual hot, bare main street of a city. And that reminds me that it is a law in Switzerland or in the forest cantons that no one can cut down a tree except by official permission, and then another must be planted to take its place.

In the agricultural and pastoral parts of Switzerland a great deal of land is held “in common,” that is government land, under the control of the canton, not for sale at any price, but for the use of the people of the community under strict regulations. So a Swiss peasant will have a few acres of land of his own, a few cattle, and a right as a citizen to pasture on the common ground and a share of the profits of the forest. Immigration is not invited, although tourists with money are welcomed, for the more people the less the share of each in the common fund. There can hardly be any poverty in Switzerland, except, of course, in the cities. Every Swiss peasant can make a living if he will work. But neither can he be expected to get rich nor be a bigger man than his father. He must follow the beaten path marked out by centuries of custom and more firmly established than the unwritten constitution of the country.

I am getting more and more impressed with the fallacy of “cheapness” in Europe. Comparing prices with those of Hutchinson, I find that the things which are cheaper here are silks, kid gloves, diamonds, and the products of labor like embroidery, lace, clocks, wood carvings, tailor-made clothes and straw hats (poorly made). Cotton goods, linen goods, shoes, iron and steel, bread and meat, coffee, and most of what we call necessities of life, are higher in Europe than in America. It is the people who are cheap and not the things; and when I say “cheap” I do not mean lacking in energy, ability, or industry, but in opportunity to make more than a living, to have leisure or the common luxuries and often necessities.

This is the last night in Switzerland. To-morrow we cross the line to Constance, which is in Germany, and which is spelled Konstanz and abbreviated “Kaz.,” which makes it near to “Kas.” Neuhausen is the place where the Rhine makes its big leap down the rocks, a fall of sixty feet, and on account of the volume of water the grandest in Europe. It is the Niagara Falls of the Alpine country, but it is not in the same class with Niagara Falls, U. S. A. The Rhine is about as wide as the Kaw at Topeka, but much deeper, and the falls are about four times the height of Bowersock’s dam at Lawrence. A beautiful hotel faces the roaring torrent as it precipitates itself over the rocks amid clouds of spray. The prices at the hotel are higher than the falls. I can only call to mind one place where you feel that you are being more genteelly robbed with your own consent, and that is at Niagara Falls, New York. But our Niagara Falls are higher to correspond.

GERMANY.

IN THE BLACK FOREST.

TRIBERG, GERMANY, July 17, 1905.

This is a small town in the middle of the Black Forest. I had read a good deal of the Black Forest, but really had no idea what it was. The name sounded as if it might be a part of Arkansas or Louisiana, and I think I was looking for swamps and waste land covered with underbrush and impenetrable to travelers except on made roads. But as a matter of fact it is as delightful and beautiful a country as I have seen since I left Kansas. The land is mountainous, but it is fertile and the valleys and hillsides are dotted with thrifty-looking little farms. The name applies, all right, for the mountains are covered with dense forests of spruce trees with a dark-green foliage which looks really black. The farming land has evidently been cleared in the centuries that have passed since the roving Germans settled into peaceful peasants and quit their occupation of making Rome howl by raiding and pillaging the towns of the declining empire. The Black Forest covers a great part of southwest Germany, mostly in the state or grand duchy of Baden. Up to a short time ago it had a number of practically independent little kingdoms about the size of your hat, which were in a perpetual struggle for existence and recognition. Anthony Hope used the Black Forest as the scene for his Zenda stories, and to-day we came through the principality of Fürstenberg, one of his favorite places, in which the prince of Fürstenberg still holds an honorary position but under the actual government of Emperor William. I also noticed that the prince was proprietor of a big brewery.

It is harvest-time in the Black Forest, and men and women are gathering the crops, small grain and hay, using the hand-sickle and the hand-rake but doing their work in a thorough manner. When they get through the raking I don’t suppose there is a waste straw left lying on the ground or a kernel of grain which is not carefully picked up. The farmer in Europe would get rich on what an American farmer drops on the way from the field to the barn. They have fine horses and cattle in the Black Forest, and look prosperous. When one horse is used in a wagon he is harnessed alongside the pole and not between shafts. I was told the reason was that it was to make it easy to add another horse if desired without changing the pole. That was nearly as strange as the one horse alongside the pole.

The time is past when the sight of ladies working in the field excites any interest, although I still have a little feeling when the woman is sixty or seventy years old. It is not so bad in Germany, and especially in the Black Forest, where the air is light and exhilarating; and then the men work too. In Italy the hauling was done by animals as follows: Horses, oxen, cows, dogs, women. Sometimes a woman and a dog were hitched together to small wagons, especially milk carts. In Switzerland the dogs were still in harness, but the women were out of it. And in the Black Forest I believe the dogs are freed, as all the vehicles I have seen have been drawn by horses or oxen. Perhaps it will be different later. I write now only of the Black Forest. We drove for twelve miles down one of the valleys and through the little villages. A number of the old peasant costumes were worn by women and girls, although most of them were dressed in the same styles as in Paris or Hutchinson. A very striking head-dress for the feminine is one of the Black Forest styles, a bonnet with two large wings extending upward at an angle of about 40 degrees from the head, and with flowing bands several feet long down the back. Girls and unmarried women have bright-colored wings and bands, married women must wear black. By the way, the women of continental Europe wherever we have been have worn earrings,—France, Italy, and Switzerland. As American women generally discarded these disfiguring ornaments several years ago, the sight has been a strange one. Especially in Italy are the earrings large and imposing, rich and poor vieing with each other in size of the pendants and rings.

Aside from agriculture the main industry of the Black Forest is wood-carving and clock-making. There are some small factories, but as a rule the work is done at home; and it is very good. We visited one of these home shops, and the whole family showed us their handiwork. A beautifully carved wooden hall clock with a cuckoo and a music-box which played every half-hour was only $4 American money. It must have taken the man a week to make it, and in our country the price would have been several times as large. There is a big tariff on this ware going into America, and it is all right. If it were not so, our American wood-workers would have to learn another trade or work for $4 or $5 a week. And if they got only $4 or $5 a week they would not eat much meat, buy much clothing, or pay for many newspapers. See?

The people of the Black Forest are a charming, friendly lot. I suppose they are as happy as anybody, although one of them was very proud of a brother who had gone to America and was making “much geld,” and whom he would follow if he could. All through Europe I meet people who have relatives in America, and that may account for the friendly treatment I have everywhere received. These American relatives have all gotten “rich” according to their European relatives, which shows that the immigrants to our country all succeed or keep a stiff upper lip when they write to the folks in the fatherland.

The architecture of the Black Forest houses is as striking as any I have seen. Nearly every farmhouse is very large, at least three stories high, and on one or more sides the roof “gambrels” off from the high ridge nearly to the ground. The effect is like a tent-covering, and the roof is often thatched or tiled in two or three colors,—on some the green grass is growing. Part of the house is the barn. The winter here is said to be severe, and the Forest peasant evidently believes in having his family and his horses, cows and chickens where they can be comfortable and sociable. The houses are extra clean, and the furniture, dishes and utensils of the kitchen shine with the good polishing they must receive. The little farms are tilled to the limit, and are generally irrigated and always fertilized. Just to show how these people manage to get a living out of the ground and the care they use to get it all, I saw women and men on the roadside with baskets cleaning the road of manure and carrying it to their land.

We have had to learn a new money system in Germany. France, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have what is called a “Latin league,” with interchangeable currency, the unit being the franc (France, Switzerland, and Belgium), and the lire (Italy). But Germany joins no Latin leagues. The unit of the German currency is the “mark,” equivalent to twenty-five cents American. This is divided into one hundred pfennigs. Prices are carried out to the pfennig, and one-pfennig coins (in value one-fourth of one cent) are seen more than our one-cent pieces at home. That illustrates the close, exact, economical German spirit. The first time I made a small purchase in Germany I got a pocketful of change. Mrs. Morgan wanted a little money, and I gave her a couple of handfuls. She said she didn’t want so much, as she only intended to buy inexpensive things. I had actually given her about fifty cents. When one hundred copper coins make twenty-five cents and they are used in most transactions, you can realize what a heavy load you carry and how you can get that wealthy feeling without much actual expense.

Soon after leaving Constance our road turned away from the Rhine, and going through a tunnel we were in the valley of the Danube. It startled me a little, as I had always connected the Danube with Austria and Turkey. But sure enough, we were riding along the banks of the Danube, which has been made famous by history, poetry and music. If a raindrop fell on one side of that hill it would go down to the Rhine to the Baltic, and if the wind blew it over to the other side before it struck the earth it would start eastward and journey down the Danube to the Black sea. Rivers are like human beings,—they get their directions from the place where they start and go onward along the road of least resistance to the place appointed, unless dammed or taken up by man or God, in which case they will struggle and work to seep back to the channel in which it was intended they should make their course.

By the way, the “Beautiful Blue Danube” is not blue at all in this part of its career, but almost black, seemingly taking its hue from the forests in which it has its origin.

The town of Triberg is a quaint little place near the top of the mountain, and apparently about one hundred miles from Nowhere. I have had my first experience with what I understand is not infrequent in old German towns. There is a tax on strangers, thirty pfennigs a day or one mark a week, and our hotel has to pay and charge in our bill. Ministers of the gospel, and paupers, are exempt. In America if they had a fool tax like that they would also exempt newspaper men. The only way I could get out of paying the tax was to make affidavit that I was a minister or a pauper, so I reluctantly gave up the offer to dodge taxation and the town of Triberg is fifteen cents to the good on account of our stay. However, there is a very fine waterfall, and we looked fifteen cents’ worth at that and called it even.

STORIES OF STRASSBURG.

STRASSBURG, GERMANY, July 18, 1905.

To use the American vernacular, Strassburg is a good town. It has the best-looking stores, the most energetic acting people and the most thriving appearance of any city since we left Paris. The reason for this is probably the mingling of the German and the French and the location of the city as the metropolis of a very rich territory lying in both countries. Strassburg is a German city in which the people are at heart French. Thirty years ago the treaty which ended the Franco-German war gave Strassburg and two of the rich provinces of eastern France, Alsace and Lorraine, to the German empire. But it did not give the German emperor a warranty deed to the hearts of the people, and they long for their old associations. Probably the new generation is not so much disposed to France, and the influence of education and environment will gradually change the desire of the Alsatians to be sometime reunited with their old countrymen, but time and again to-day in talking with the Strassburgers they have given me to understand that they were not Germans but French.

Strassburg has a history as a city on its own account. Away back in 1300 the people revolted from the rule of the bishop who was their sovereign, and gained their independence. For 400 years Strassburg was what is known as a “free city,” owing some allegiance to the German empire but governing itself and doing about as it pleased. The language, the customs and the sympathy of the people were German. In 1681 Louis XIV. of France in a time of peace seized Strassburg, and a few years later in a general treaty France was confirmed in the title, and from that time until 1871 it was a French city. During the war of 1870 Strassburg did not surrender to the overwhelming German army until its defenses were battered down and the city bombarded. And as I wrote from Paris, in the galaxy of statues representing the cities of France in the Parisian Place de la Concorde, the statue of Strassburg is hung with emblems of mourning, and some day France will fight to get the city back. Germany knows this, and the city has been strongly fortified and a garrison of 15,000 German soldiers is kept there. So many soldiers in a city of 150,000 people give a showy look to the streets, the promenades and the public places, and doubtless is a good thing financially for the merchants.

Since leaving Italy I have sworn off on cathedrals, but I had to go to the one here because it is a good one and because of the Strassburg clock. The spire of the Strassburg cathedral is one of the highest in Europe, 465 feet, beating by a few feet St. Peter’s at Rome and St. Paul’s in London. The rest of the building is just the ordinary cathedral except for the clock. The first big clock was constructed here in 1352 and it lasted two centuries, when another took its place, to be succeeded sixty years ago by the present one. This clock is about the size of the front of an ordinary church. It not only tells the hour and minute of the day, but the day of the week, the month of the year, the feast days of the church, and is regulated to run for centuries, automatically making the right figures for leap years and adapting itself to the revolution of feast and fast days for an almost unlimited number of years. Every fifteen minutes an angel figure strikes the bell for the quarter-hour, and figures representing boyhood, youth, manhood and old age come out for the appropriate quarters. A skeleton strikes the hour and another reverses an hour-glass. At noon there is a parade of the twelve apostles before the Saviour, and a big rooster at one side crows loudly twice before Peter gets to the front and the third time as he passes. I am getting a great sympathy for Peter because he has that story thrown up to him in so many cathedrals, churches and pictures in Europe. It seems to me that Peter did enough after that to entitle him to a rest on the cock-crow story.

Next to the cathedral clock the most interesting sight to my mind was the washerwomen’s boats in the river. About 500 women were in these canal-shaped boats washing clothes, rinsing them in the river and having a good gossiping time of it. The emperor of Germany has a palace in Strassburg where he spends at least three days every year in the month of May. I did not know this, so when I saw the imperial palace on the city map I told the driver to take us there. I had never met Emperor William and he had never met me. I entered the palace door as directed by the cab-driver and was pleasantly received by a fine, portly gentleman. Of course I knew he wasn’t the emperor, so I spoke in a dignified way as becomes an American citizen toying with the effete monarchies of Europe, and asked the gentleman in my best German if the emperor was at home, at the same time assuring him that if the emperor was busy not to bother him, as I could come again after supper when he would be through his work. The fat gentleman bowed and told me the emperor was here only in May, and asked me if we would like to go over the palace. I spoke up abruptly, as if I were used to running around palaces; that as I had nothing else to do just then, having laid out to put in a short time with Emperor Bill, I wouldn’t mind if I did. He was a very nice man, a court chamberlain, he said, and he took Mrs. Morgan and me all through the palace and the big dining-room and ball-room and the king’s den, and all that sort of thing. Before we went onto the polished floors of the big rooms we had to put felt slippers on over our shoes—a good thing to keep the floors from getting scratched, and I suppose it is a kind of ground rule that Mrs. Emperor has made to protect the varnish from the hobnailed boots of William’s friends. I hope the custom won’t spread to America.

The German emperor has a mighty good house in Strassburg, and it has been furnished regardless of expense. There was a notice up, “Visitors not allowed to sit on the chairs,” but I wasn’t very tired anyway. I looked for a sign not to spit on the floor to go with some of the other wall decoration, but it must have been overlooked. The house looked stiff, and I don’t believe Bill has much fun at home and probably his wife makes him go out on the porch to smoke. I was sorry not to meet the emperor, as we will not get to Berlin, and I had some things to tell him. However, I feel that I have done the proper thing by calling on him and not waiting for him to hunt me up.

There is not so much American-made stuff in Europe as I expected. There is a good deal, but in fact these Germans and French are up to about everything that we are, and sometimes they have us bested. The Singer sewing-machine is everywhere, even in Italy. American shoes are the leaders in their lines in every city. American typewriters are sold ahead of European. Wernicke bookcases and office furniture are advertised and sold almost as at home. But the list of American goods is not very long, or else they are sold under other names and brands. To-day we bought a good picture of a typical German girl to take home with us as our art collection from Europe. Before we had gone a block Mrs. Morgan found the tag which proclaimed, “Made in Springfield, Massachusetts, U. S. A.” We were chagrined that our European purchase had turned out to be an American importation, sold to us at a higher price than it would have been at home, but we were proud that here in Germany they knew the country to send to in order to get good pictures of fetching Dutch maidens. At Zurich I started to buy a little office fixture which I thought I had never seen before and which I intended to take home to surprise the Kansans, when I found out just in time that it was made by the Globe-Wernicke company of Cincinnati, and I knew we had the same thing for sale at The News office in Hutchinson. Hereafter in buying souvenirs of Europe we will look close for the brand.

This is the place where the “pâté de fois gras” originated. I do not know how many people in Kansas know what pâté de fois gras is and whether it is a flower or a dog. I had once seen the words on a bill of fare in a very swell restaurant, but the figures which followed the name were so much larger than those after ham and eggs that I stuck to “ham and.” But when in Rome you must see the Forum, in Venice you must see St. Mark’s, and in Strassburg you must have some pâté de fois gras. The food combination which the four French words stand for is based on goose-liver, and corresponds to about what we would call “goose-liver smothered in roses.” It is very good, and you never forget the delicious taste or the price. Strassburg chefs make the stuff, can it and ship it all over the world to people who like delicate things to eat and who have sufficient credit to get a good stand-off. Pâté de fois gras is sweeter than chocolate, more luscious than peaches and more delicious than lemon pop at a Fourth of July picnic. It is a proof that Strassburgers have French stomachs as well as French hearts.

Speaking of eatables, we had the first loaf of bread in Switzerland that we had seen since we left home. After nearly two months on hard, stale rolls the sight of a reasonably good loaf of bread at Geneva made as strong an impression on my mind as Mont Blanc. Anybody who has traveled in Europe or in Arkansas will appreciate the feelings of a Kansan when he puts a slice of fairly soft bread between his teeth. It is better than pâté de fois gras, and it is almost exclusively an American institution.

IN OLD HEIDELBERG.

HEIDELBERG, GERMANY, July 22, 1905.

This is the old and famous university town of Germany. It is about two miles long and 200 yards wide, lying between the river Neckar and the steep hills which rise 500 feet high and which can only be ascended by terraced roads or a modern tunnel railway. The town is of comparatively recent origin, being really started only 850 years ago, when a Rhenish count who wanted to build a strong and impregnable fortress selected a spot 400 feet straight up the hill from the river and built the old castle of Heidelberg. Being thus the capital of a little German state, the Palatinate of the Rhine, it was an important place during the Middle Ages, and was fought over every few years for several centuries. In the fourteenth century the ruling count, whose title was Elector, developed a literary streak and founded the university, which became the center of learning and scientific study in Germany, and has continued so until the present day, although some of the newer universities like Berlin and Leipsig are now larger. The valley of the Neckar joins the valley of the Rhine here and makes a fertile territory and a prosperous city, but the university and the students are the main features of modern Heidelberg, now that counts, electors and castles are ruins or relics. There are many students in Heidelberg from America and other countries, but it is the rollicking German “yunkers” who make the life of the place.

German universities differ somewhat from American universities in the character and method of work. There are no recitations—only lectures and examinations. A student does not have to attend either. He can attend Heidelberg year in and year out and devote himself exclusively to the beer-garden and the dueling-ground. Or he can work hard, receive the ablest instruction and the highest degrees. The discipline of the common schools in Germany is severe—military in its character. But at the university the young man or young woman (for women now attend lectures at Heidelberg) can do as they please and go to Hades if they desire. The university buildings are plain and ordinary. The picturesque feature is the students, especially the young men who belong to the various “corps.” Less than 10 per cent. of the students are members of these societies, but they color the town, for each corps has a distinctive cap,—red, yellow, white, etc. These organizations are the social life of the university, and at all hours of the day or night they are in evidence, parading with their caps and canes, occupying the beer-gardens and the promenade, jollying the girl waiters and having what is called in America a High Old Time.

Everybody has heard of the duel or sword-fighting. It is as much an institution at Heidelberg as football is at Princeton or K. U. Not many students take part in it, only members of the six corps, but it is the show feature of student life. Each corps has about twenty members. Each member has to fight at least one duel a term with a member of some other corps. This morning we went to the dueling-place just outside of the city and saw the game.

One gets a great deal of misinformation about this student dueling, but as near as I can find out it is done in a genteel and cold-blooded manner. When it is the turn of one of the corps members to fight he makes a face or refuses to salute a member of another corps. That constitutes cause for the duel, and the preliminaries are then arranged by the officers of the respective corps according to the rules and regulations that have come down through generations. The fighting is done in an inner court of a wine-garden. This morning there were ten duels on the program, and when we arrived the third was in progress. A young man of the bright-red-cap corps was trying to slice the face of a member of the dark-red-cap corps. Each was covered with felt armor, which protected all of his body, and also had goggles and nose-pad, a little bit more so than a football player. The seconds, very similarly attired, stood by the side of the principals and struck up the swords at the end of each round or when the blood came. The only unprotected places were the head and face, and the game was to slash the opponent there, not to stick him. Thrusting is evidently against the rules. A surgeon with an apron like a butcher attended to the cuts and the members of both corps stood quietly and calmly by, giving vent to no expression of feeling whatever. The officers of each corps saluted, the word was given, the two swords clashed away for a minute, and each fellow had a nice long cut on his cheek. When the round was over the seconds sponged the cuts. There is no specified number of rounds, but whenever the two seconds are satisfied that one man is cut enough the other is declared the victor and they salute and retire to get court-plastered or sewed up as is necessary. We saw four duels and got tired of the fun. In the last fought one of the men was apparently an experienced swordsman and his opponent apparently a beginner. (I understand that in order to show his courage a new man always challenges an expert.) After four rounds the face of the weaker swordsman was streaming with blood from a half-dozen cuts. I suppose he looked upon his defeat as a real victory because he showed the fellows that he could stand up and take punishment and never wince. Some people have curious ideas of greatness.