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CHAPTER XV.

AFOOT IN GERMANY.-POVERTY OF THE STUDENTS.-ADVENTURES OF A DUTCHMAN.-THE BOOZY LOVER.-MARRIAGE AND FUNERAL CUSTOMS.

THE stranger entering Heidelberg is apt to think there has been a bloody riot, and that the Heidelbergians got the worst of it. The town is full of students, and almost every student is slashed and gashed with sword-wounds. Some have their ears and nose slotted, others have their checks cut from jaw to skull. These are wounds received in duels which are fought twice a week in a little white house across the river. On the morning of the duelling-days streams of carriages may be seen crossing the bridge on the way to the little house. Each carriage contains only one student and a dog, so that it requires a number of vehicles to get all the dogs and all the students over. Mark Twain, in his "Tramp Abroad," airily says:

"In the interest of science, I told my agent to procure admission, and on the appointed day was prompt on hand to witness the proceedings."

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It is provoking that Mark did not explain how his "agent procured admission. While the duels are in progress sentinel students are posted about to give warning of the approach of strangers. Only corps students and their intimate friends are admitted to the sacred precincts.

The old Heidelberg Castle is still a romantic place. Portions of its wall have been blown to pieces by the French, and parts have suffered sadly from the ravages of time; still, much of the old-time grandeur remains. Often I strolled by night through its gloomy underground passages, its deserted moats and dikes, imagination going back to the time when the castle.

was full of stirring life, when stern soldiers stood in the now empty sentry-boxes, and brave knights, all clad in steel, galloped across the drawbridge, and war was the general work of life. Though war yet seems to make a big part of German life, still there is an improvement: modern times are a little more peaceful than past times.

One evening I sat by the spring in the court-yard-the same spring whose cool, clear waters the knights and ladies of old had drunk from. The shadows grew deeper and deeper as the moon sank behind the ruined walls. The sound of an old German folks-song came floating to me on the still night air. The voice sounded sweet and young. The situation, the hour, harmonizing with my thoughts, all conspired to rouse within me the feelings of romance, of poetry, which doubtless is latent in every breast only twenty-two years old. My heart gave a bound; I listened breathlessly and eagerly; gazed, not only hoping, but actually expecting, to see a fair lady shine out from the gloom. So I was not the least startled when a white figure appeared in one of the upper windows of the castle. Just as I was about to address her in Romeo style-"Fair spirit," etc.—another voice interrupted the singer-a good, substantial, every-day voice of a good, substantial, every-day German Frau.

"Louisa," said the voice-"Louisa, have you brought in the wash ?"

And the sweet singing stopped, and the sweet voice screamed, "I'm agoing to, now!"

That ended my Heidelberg Castle romance. I learned next day that the rooms looking out on the south end of the castle are occupied by the custodian's family. His daughter, the sweet singer, is a solid, red-cheeked German lassie weighing fully one hundred and fifty pounds. The wife of the custodian speaks four languages; and when she shows the castle, rattles off her descriptions in French, English, German, and Italian.

In Germany as in Italy it was my custom to stop at work

ing-men's cheap hotels and lodging-houses. They afforded a better and closer view of the classes the study of which formed the object of my trip. Moreover, they are economical. The highest price demanded in such places for a room is forty pfennige (nine cents). The usual rate is only fifteen or twenty pfennige (three or four cents). One afternoon in Frankforton-the-Main, while lying down in the room of a workman's hotel, resting after a long tramp, there was a timid knock at the door, and a moment later a head poked itself in, followed by the very shabbily dressed body of a very shabby - looking man. He looked at me hesitatingly, then said, in an humble, apologetic tone,

"Pardon, mein Herr. I am hungry. I have had nothing to eat."

"Nothing to eat!" I exclaimed, rising from my couch.

“Yes,” he said, “nothing for two days. I am very hungry.” "But would they give you nothing at the farm-houses? Will they give you nothing here in the hote!?"

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“Ah, IIerr, I have not dared to ask. It is forbidden to beg, forbidden to ask for work."

The man seemed honest, yet it looked hardly credible that a man should be forbidden to ask for work. I took him to the nearest eating-house and ordered a substantial but cheap meal. The poor fellow was ravenous. He had eaten nothing for two days, and on an empty stomach had dragged himself forty miles. When he had done eating he told me his story. He was the son of a South German bricklayer. His father had given him a common-school education; but being ambitious above the ordinary, he had worked hard, saved a pittance of money, and gone to the university at Leipsic. He was now on his way home to earn a livelihood, as he hoped, by teaching. His statement regarding begging and asking for work I found to be literally true. An observer entering a German town may see the announcement that beggars of alms and persons asking employment will be sent to the workhouse. I gave my young student a mark (twenty-four cents), enough to pay his way for the next

two days' journey, whereupon he took his departure with many blessings and expressions of gratitude.*

Frankfort's main recommendation to the tourist is its historical houses-houses in which great men either lived or were born. On Jew Street is still standing the shanty where the first Rothschild was born. In 1872 seventeen houses in the neighborhood fell down and killed thirty-four people. New buildings have taken their places; the Rothschild shanty, which somehow did not fall, is the only one of the old houses left. The head office of the Rothschilds, just around the corner from the birthplace of the founder of the firm, is in a very commonlooking house; from outside appearances one would never imagine that behind those windows and gratings was the money centre of Germany, if not, indeed, of all Europe. Jew Street was formerly a kind of Jew prison. There were gates at each end; a bell rang at sunset, and any Jew caught off Jew Street after that hour was severely punished.

Visitors are shown the house wherein Goethe was born-a simple, plain building, with a tablet over the door, merely stating,

"IN THIS HOUSE JOHN WOLFGANG GOETHE WAS BORN,

AUGUST 28, 1749."

The window from which Luther made his celebrated speech is shown.

*Professor Billroth comments upon the great increase of pauper students, and as examples of the straits to which these hapless hungerers after knowledge are reduced, quotes from a Berlin paper the application made by a university student who asked to be employed as a night-sweeper; a post which, however modest, would not interfere with the prosecution of his studies. In the Gallician and Hungarian universities poor students sell matches on the streets, or, if they have a musical gift, eke out an existence by playing or singing in cafés. Many of them, for want of books and leisure to study, never manage to pass the examinations, and settle down after thirty to the very humblest occupations, while not a few take to evil courses and swell the army of criminals. This fact I obtained from an article in the Pall Mall Gazette bearing upon the subject in question.

"If the way is covered with devils, yet will I go to Worms," spoke the intrepid reformer; and the imaginative mind, in gazing at the window from which he spoke those words, can picture the scene, can see the mob staring and wondering at such determination- —a determination that braved the Holy Catholic Church, the mightiest power of that age. On the Steinweg, glancing up I saw a stone tablet just under a window of the second story. Translated, the inscription on the tablet runs thus:

"IN THIS HOUSE WAS THE PEACE BETWEEN FRANCE AND

GERMANY SIGNED,

1871."

There, in that room, the five milliards of francs were promised; Napoleon was already in exile-a disappointed, broken-down man. The strange career that began in the fortress at Ham was virtually closed in that second-story room on the Steinweg in Frankfort. The Kaiser Hall contains portraits of the German emperors from Conrad the First (912 A.D.) down to modern times. These portraits represent men in gowns with villanous-looking faces. In those days, to become emperor it was necessary to lay aside scruples and play the villain's part. Henry V. (1106 A.D.) has, in particular, a disagreeable face-cunning and cruel. I would not like to meet such a face on a lonely road. Most of those old fellows went crusading to Jerusalem. Crusading was by no means a pleasure-jaunt, and no doubt the hardships endured, the bloody scrimmages, the robberies and general wickedness perpetrated by those pious Crusaders, had a great deal to do in giving that ill-tempered expression to the faces pictured on the canvas.

A Frankfort window-sign reads thus: "Jeweller to their Majesties: His Majesty the King of Denmark, his Majesty the King of Greece," etc., through the list of all the kings of Europe and the Emperor of Brazil; then a list of queens: "Her Majesty the Queen of Portugal," etc.; then a list of "Excellencies, dukes," etc. The window was fairly covered with the high and

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