Book: A Tramp Abroad, Part 3
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Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> A Tramp Abroad, Part 3
So the most renowned knights came from the four corners
of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after
the other. A panic arose and spread. Heroes grew cautious.
The procession ceased. The dragon became more destructive
than ever. The people lost all hope of succor, and fled
to the mountains for refuge.
At last Sir Wissenschaft, a poor and obscure knight,
out of a far country, arrived to do battle with the monster.
A pitiable object he was, with his armor hanging in rags
about him, and his strange-shaped knapsack strapped
upon his back. Everybody turned up their noses at him,
and some openly jeered him. But he was calm. He simply
inquired if the emperor's offer was still in force.
The emperor said it was--but charitably advised him to go
and hunt hares and not endanger so precious a life as his
in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the
world's most illustrious heroes.
But this tramp only asked--"Were any of these heroes
men of science?" This raised a laugh, of course,
for science was despised in those days. But the tramp
was not in the least ruffled. He said he might be a
little in advance of his age, but no matter--science
would come to be honored, some time or other. He said
he would march against the dragon in the morning.
Out of compassion, then, a decent spear was offered him,
but he declined, and said, "spears were useless to men
of science." They allowed him to sup in the servants'
hall, and gave him a bed in the stables.
When he started forth in the morning, thousands were
gathered to see. The emperor said:
"Do not be rash, take a spear, and leave off your knapsack."
But the tramp said:
"It is not a knapsack," and moved straight on.
The dragon was waiting and ready. He was breathing forth
vast volumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame.
The ragged knight stole warily to a good position,
then he unslung his cylindrical knapsack--which was simply
the common fire-extinguisher known to modern times
--and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot
the dragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth.
Out went the fires in an instant, and the dragon curled up
and died.
This man had brought brains to his aid. He had reared
dragons from the egg, in his laboratory, he had watched
over them like a mother, and patiently studied them
and experimented upon them while they grew. Thus he had
found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon;
put out the dragon's fires and it could make steam
no longer, and must die. He could not put out a fire
with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher.
The dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neck
and said:
"Deliverer, name your request," at the same time beckoning
out behind with his heel for a detachment of his daughters
to form and advance. But the tramp gave them no observance.
He simply said:
"My request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly
of the manufacture and sale of spectacles in Germany."
The emperor sprang aside and exclaimed:
"This transcends all the impudence I ever heard! A
modest demand, by my halidome! Why didn't you ask
for the imperial revenues at once, and be done with it?"
But the monarch had given his word, and he kept it.
To everybody's surprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately
reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a
great and crushing burden was removed from the nation.
The emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to
testify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding
everybody to buy this benefactor's spectacles and wear them,
whether they needed them or not.
So originated the wide-spread custom of wearing
spectacles in Germany; and as a custom once established
in these old lands is imperishable, this one remains
universal in the empire to this day. Such is the legend
of the monopolist's once stately and sumptuous castle,
now called the "Spectacular Ruin."
On the right bank, two or three miles below the Spectacular
Ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings
overlooking the water from the crest of a lofty elevation.
A stretch of two hundred yards of the high front wall
was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the mass of
buildings within rose three picturesque old towers.
The place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a
family of princely rank. This castle had its legend,
too, but I should not feel justified in repeating
it because I doubted the truth of some of its minor details.
Along in this region a multitude of Italian laborers
were blasting away the frontage of the hills to make
room for the new railway. They were fifty or a hundred
feet above the river. As we turned a sharp corner they
began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look
out for the explosions. It was all very well to warn us,
but what could WE do? You can't back a raft upstream,
you can't hurry it downstream, you can't scatter out
to one side when you haven't any room to speak of,
you won't take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other
shore when they appear to be blasting there, too.
Your resources are limited, you see. There is simply
nothing for it but to watch and pray.
For some hours we had been making three and a half or four
miles an hour and we were still making that. We had been
dancing right along until those men began to shout;
then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that I had
never seen a raft go so slowly. When the first blast went
off we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result.
No harm done; none of the stones fell in the water.
Another blast followed, and another and another.
Some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern
of us.
We ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it
was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable
weeks I ever spent, either aship or ashore. Of course
we frequently manned the poles and shoved earnestly
for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts
of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole
and looked up to get the bearings of his share of it.
It was very busy times along there for a while.
It appeared certain that we must perish, but even that was
not the bitterest thought; no, the abjectly unheroic nature
of the death--that was the sting--that and the bizarre
wording of the resulting obituary: "SHOT WITH A ROCK,
ON A RAFT." There would be no poetry written about it.
None COULD be written about it. Example:
NOT by war's shock, or war's shaft,--SHOT, with a rock,
on a raft.
No poet who valued his reputation would touch such a
theme as that. I should be distinguished as the only
"distinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted,
in 1878.
But we escaped, and I have never regretted it.
The last blast was peculiarly strong one, and after
the small rubbish was done raining around us and we
were just going to shake hands over our deliverance,
a later and larger stone came down amongst our little
group of pedestrians and wrecked an umbrella. It did
no other harm, but we took to the water just the same.
It seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the
new railway gradings is done mainly by Italians.
That was a revelation. We have the notion in our country
that Italians never do heavy work at all, but confine
themselves to the lighter arts, like organ-grinding,
operatic singing, and assassination. We have blundered,
that is plain.
All along the river, near every village, we saw little
station-houses for the future railway. They were
finished and waiting for the rails and business.
They were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be.
They were always of brick or stone; they were of graceful
shape, they had vines and flowers about them already,
and around them the grass was bright and green,
and showed that it was carefully looked after. They were
a decoration to the beautiful landscape, not an offense.
Wherever one saw a pile of gravel or a pile of broken stone,
it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave
or a stack of cannon-balls; nothing about those stations
or along the railroad or the wagon-road was allowed
to look shabby or be unornamental. The keeping a country
in such beautiful order as Germany exhibits, has a wise
practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people
in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mischievous.
As the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up,
but I thought maybe we might make Hirschhorn, so we went on.
Presently the sky became overcast, and the captain came
aft looking uneasy. He cast his eye aloft, then shook
his head, and said it was coming on to blow. My party
wanted to land at once--therefore I wanted to go on.
The captain said we ought to shorten sail anyway,
out of common prudence. Consequently, the larboard watch
was ordered to lay in his pole. It grew quite dark,
now, and the wind began to rise. It wailed through
the swaying branches of the trees, and swept our decks
in fitful gusts. Things were taking on an ugly look.
The captain shouted to the steersman on the forward
log:
"How's she landing?"
The answer came faint and hoarse from far forward:
"Nor'-east-and-by-nor'--east-by-east, half-east, sir."
"Let her go off a point!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"What water have you got?"
"Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard,
two and a half scant on the labboard!"
"Let her go off another point!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Forward, men, all of you! Lively, now! Stand by to crowd
her round the weather corner!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
Then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting,
but the forms of the men were lost in the darkness and
the sounds were distorted and confused by the roaring
of the wind through the shingle-bundles. By this time
the sea was running inches high, and threatening every
moment to engulf the frail bark. Now came the mate,
hurrying aft, and said, close to the captain's ear,
in a low, agitated voice:
"Prepare for the worst, sir--we have sprung a leak!"
"Heavens! where?"
"Right aft the second row of logs."
"Nothing but a miracle can save us! Don't let the men know,
or there will be a panic and mutiny! Lay her in shore
and stand by to jump with the stern-line the moment
she touches. Gentlemen, I must look to you to second
my endeavors in this hour of peril. You have hats--go
forward and bail for your lives!"
Down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in
spray and thick darkness. At such a moment as this,
came from away forward that most appalling of all cries
that are ever heard at sea:
"MAN OVERBOARD!"
The captain shouted:
"Hard a-port! Never mind the man! Let him climb aboard
or wade ashore!"
Another cry came down the wind:
"Breakers ahead!"
"Where away?"
"Not a log's length off her port fore-foot!"
We had groped our slippery way forward, and were now
bailing with the frenzy of despair, when we heard
the mate's terrified cry, from far aft:
"Stop that dashed bailing, or we shall be aground!"
But this was immediately followed by the glad shout:
"Land aboard the starboard transom!"
"Saved!" cried the captain. "Jump ashore and take a turn
around a tree and pass the bight aboard!"
The next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing
for joy, while the rain poured down in torrents.
The captain said he had been a mariner for forty years
on the Neckar, and in that time had seen storms to make
a man's cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never,
never seen a storm that even approached this one.
How familiar that sounded! For I have been at sea a good
deal and have heard that remark from captains with a
frequency accordingly.
We framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks
and admiration and gratitude, and took the first
opportunity to vote it, and put it in writing and
present it to the captain, with the customary speech.
We tramped through the darkness and the drenching summer
rain full three miles, and reached "The Naturalist Tavern"
in the village of Hirschhorn just an hour before midnight,
almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue, and terror.
I can never forget that night.
The landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be
crusty and disobliging; he did not at all like being
turned out of his warm bed to open his house for us.
But no matter, his household got up and cooked a quick
supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves,
to keep off consumption. After supper and punch we
had an hour's soothing smoke while we fought the naval
battle over again and voted the resolutions; then we
retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs
that had clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom
pillowcases most elaborately and tastefully embroidered
by hand.
Such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent
in German village inns as they are rare in ours.
Our villages are superior to German villages in
more merits, excellences, conveniences, and privileges
than I can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in the list.
"The Naturalist Tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all
the halls and all the rooms were lined with large glass
cases which were filled with all sorts of birds and animals,
glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and set up in the most natural
eloquent and dramatic attitudes. The moment we were abed,
the rain cleared away and the moon came out. I dozed off
to sleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl
which was looking intently down on me from a high perch
with the air of a person who thought he had met me before,
but could not make out for certain.
But young Z did not get off so easily. He said that as he was
sinking deliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows
and developed a huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed,
but crouching, with every muscle tense, for a spring,
and with its glittering glass eyes aimed straight at him.
It made Z uncomfortable. He tried closing his own eyes,
but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept
making him open them again to see if the cat was still
getting ready to launch at him--which she always was.
He tried turning his back, but that was a failure;
he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. So at
last he had to get up, after an hour or two of worry
and experiment, and set the cat out in the hall. So he won,
that time.
CHAPTER XVIII
[The Kindly Courtesy of Germans]
In the morning we took breakfast in the garden,
under the trees, in the delightful German summer fashion.
The air was filled with the fragrance of flowers
and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie
of the "Naturalist Tavern" was all about us. There were
great cages populous with fluttering and chattering
foreign birds, and other great cages and greater wire pens,
populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign.
There were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable
ones they were. White rabbits went loping about the place,
and occasionally came and sniffed at our shoes and shins;
a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck, walked up and
examined us fearlessly; rare breeds of chickens and
doves begged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven
hopped about with a humble, shamefaced mein which said,
"Please do not notice my exposure--think how you would
feel in my circumstances, and be charitable." If he
was observed too much, he would retire behind something
and stay there until he judged the party's interest had
found another object. I never have seen another dumb
creature that was so morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor,
who could interpret the dim reasonings of animals,
and understood their moral natures better than most men,
would have found some way to make this poor old chap forget
his troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art,
and so had to leave the raven to his griefs.
After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient
castle of Hirschhorn, and the ruined church near it.
There were some curious old bas-reliefs leaning against
the inner walls of the church--sculptured lords of
Hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn
in the picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages.
These things are suffering damage and passing to decay,
for the last Hirschhorn has been dead two hundred years,
and there is nobody now who cares to preserve the family relics.
In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and the captain
told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter
of legends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I
do not repeat his tale because there was nothing plausible
about it except that the Hero wrenched this column into its
present screw-shape with his hands --just one single wrench.
All the rest of the legend was doubtful.
But Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river.
Then the clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop,
and the old battlemented stone wall, stretching up and over
the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafy sea beyond,
make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy
the eye.
We descended from the church by steep stone stairways
which curved this way and that down narrow alleys
between the packed and dirty tenements of the village.
It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering,
unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps
and begged piteously. The people of the quarter were not
all idiots, of course, but all that begged seemed to be,
and were said to be.
I was thinking of going by skiff to the next town,
Necharsteinach; so I ran to the riverside in advance of
the party and asked a man there if he had a boat to hire.
I suppose I must have spoken High German--Court German--I
intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me.
I turned and twisted my question around and about,
trying to strike that man's average, but failed.
He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr. X arrived,
faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied
this sentence on him, in the most glib and confident way:
"Can man boat get here?"
The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered.
I can comprehend why he was able to understand that
particular sentence, because by mere accident all the
words in it except "get" have the same sound and the same
meaning in German that they have in English; but how he
managed to understand Mr. X's next remark puzzled me.
I will insert it, presently. X turned away a moment,
and I asked the mariner if he could not find a board,
and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the
purest German, but I might as well have spoken in the
purest Choctaw for all the good it did. The man tried
his best to understand me; he tried, and kept on trying,
harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use,
and said:
"There, don't strain yourself--it is of no consequence."
Then X turned to him and crisply said:
"MACHEN SIE a flat board."
I wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man
did not answer up at once, and say he would go and borrow
a board as soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling.
We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have
to go. I have given Mr. X's two remarks just as he made them.
Four of the five words in the first one were English,
and that they were also German was only accidental,
not intentional; three out of the five words in the second
remark were English, and English only, and the two German
ones did not mean anything in particular, in such a connection.
X always spoke English to Germans, but his plan was
to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down,
according to German construction, and sprinkle in a German
word without any essential meaning to it, here and there,
by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood.
He could make those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand
him, sometimes, when even young Z had failed with them;
and young Z was a pretty good German scholar. For one thing,
X always spoke with such confidence--perhaps that helped.
And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called
PLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar
to their ears than another man's German. Quite indifferent
students of German can read Fritz Reuter's charming
platt-Deutch tales with some little facility because many
of the words are English. I suppose this is the tongue
which our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them.
By and by I will inquire of some other philologist.
However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men
employed to calk the raft had found that the leak was not
a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs--a crack
that belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been
magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of
the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a good degree
of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident.
As we swam smoothly along between the enchanting shores,
we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs
in Germany and elsewhere.
As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us,
by observing and noting and inquiring, diligently and day
by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opulent
stock of misinformation. But this is not surprising;
it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country.
For example, I had the idea once, in Heidelberg,
to find out all about those five student-corps. I started
with the White Cap corps. I began to inquire of this
and that and the other citizen, and here is what I found
out:
1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none
but Prussians are admitted to it.
2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason.
It has simply pleased each corps to name itself after
some German state.
3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only
the White Cap Corps.
4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth.
5. Any student can belong to it who is European by birth.
6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he
be a Frenchman.
7. Any student can belong to it, no matter where he
was born.
8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood.
9. No student can belong to it who cannot show three full
generations of noble descent.
10. Nobility is not a necessary qualification.
11. No moneyless student can belong to it.
12. Money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has
never been thought of.
I got some of this information from students themselves
--students who did not belong to the corps.
I finally went to headquarters--to the White Caps--where I
would have gone in the first place if I had been acquainted.
But even at headquarters I found difficulties; I perceived
that there were things about the White Cap Corps which
one member knew and another one didn't. It was natural;
for very few members of any organization know ALL that can
be known about it. I doubt there is a man or a woman
in Heidelberg who would not answer promptly and confidently
three out of every five questions about the White Cap Corps
which a stranger might ask; yet it is a very safe bet
that two of the three answers would be incorrect every time.
There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing
courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or
rising up from it. This bow startles a stranger out of his
self-possession, the first time it occurs, and he is likely
to fall over a chair or something, in his embarrassment,
but it pleases him, nevertheless. One soon learns to expect
this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it;
but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow
one's self is a difficult matter for a diffident man.
One thinks, "If I rise to go, and tender my box,
and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads
to ignore the custom of their nation, and not return it,
how shall I feel, in case I survive to feel anything."
Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sits out the dinner,
and makes the strangers rise first and originate the bowing.
A table d'ho^te dinner is a tedious affair for a man
who seldom touches anything after the three first courses;
therefore I used to do some pretty dreary waiting
because of my fears. It took me months to assure myself
that those fears were groundless, but I did assure myself
at last by experimenting diligently through my agent.
I made Harris get up and bow and leave; invariably his bow
was returned, then I got up and bowed myself and retired.
Thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me,
but not for Harris. Three courses of a table d'ho^te
dinner were enough for me, but Harris preferred thirteen.
Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed
the agent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties.
Once at Baden-Baden I nearly lost a train because I could
not be sure that three young ladies opposite me at table
were Germans, since I had not heard them speak; they might
be American, they might be English, it was not safe to venture
a bow; but just as I had got that far with my thought,
one of them began a German remark, to my great relief
and gratitude; and before she got out her third word,
our bows had been delivered and graciously returned,
and we were off.