CHAPTER XL.BADEN-BADEN AND THINGS THEREIN.

A PHILOSOPHICAL TRAMP.

He came into the place with a slouching gait, though his manner was by no means deprecatory or humble. There was nothing in him to distinguish him from the regular tramp, except that his rum-illuminated face carried on its surface more intelligence and less brutality than the usual tramp shows, and he evidently had some idea of not bidding eternal good-bye to his respectability. Instead of the greasy wrap about the throat of the regular tramp, he had a paper collar, whichhe had unquestionably picked up somewhere and turned, and his coat was buttoned up carefully to conceal the painfully evident absence of a shirt, a deceit the confirmed tramp would scorn to practice. And then he wore a tall hat, and had made attempts to brush it, and his carriage, when he knew he was observed, was bold and defiant, and not cringing or slouching.

He sat down at the table with us, and commenced conversation with some remarks about the weather, some original remarks concerning the state of trade, and from that he glided with a grace that was to be commended into a disquisition as to the effect upon the commerce of the world of the building of a ship-canal across the Isthmus, and likewise the effect it would have upon the climate of the United States, ending his conversation with the request of the loan of a dollar.

“How happens it,” I asked, “that a man informed as you are, with your evident education and your general information should be borrowing dollars in this way?”

“Excuse me, sir,” said he; “I have not borrowed dollars, as yet, though I hope to. You have, as yet, made no response to my modest appeal. But why am I thus? Can you tell? Can I tell? Who is responsible for what happens to him? Who can control tastes? Who can analyze that subtle and unknown thing we call mind?”

“But who are you, anyhow?”

“I am a graduate of Harvard, sir, and a son of one of the once wealthiest men in Boston.”

“Why this condition of things, then?”

“My dear sir, I was born fortunately—you would say unfortunately—I say fortunately. I had tastes, appetites, and a philosophical mind. While a student I indulged those tastes to the top of my bent. I was the best billiard player, the most constant and steady drinker, the hardest rider, and, in fact, the most confirmed pleasure seeker in the college. I utterly refused to do anything that did not please me. I learned much, for the pursuit of knowledge afforded me a delight, but I would learn nothing the getting of which did not afford me pleasure.

“At the close of my college career, the world was before me. The question was, what should I do? What should bethe plan of my life? Should I go into business, and make a great fortune? Should I go into literature, and make myself an imperishable name? Should I go into politics, and control the destinies of nations?

“Fortunately philosophy came to my aid. What earthly good would all this do me? What good of piling up money? What good of making a name, and what earthly use was there in controlling the destiny of nations? I could do something for myself, and what I did for myself I got the good of, but why worry about making a name, or why labor to make money which I could not take with me?

“I could see no good in any of it, and so I followed the impulses of my nature, feeling that if nature was no guide then was I lost, indeed.

“I sang, I drank, I yachted, I did everything till my money was gone, and here I am.”

“Would it not have been better for you had you followed a more reputable career?”

“I don’t see it. I could have done anything that I wanted to, but to what purpose? Sir, the world is coming to an end, shortly. The approach of various planets to the earth, the frequency of comets, the changes so common now that have been totally unknown, all conspire to a very sudden ending of the planet on which we live and move. Within my life-time, doubtless, there will be a collapse. We shall either get away from the sun or get into it, or some erratic planet will come bouncing into us, and the entire universe will go to eternal smash. The earth will either melt or freeze solid, or it will be dispersed into infinitesimal fragments.

“Now, sir, let me ask you what encouragement there is for a man to worry himself about making a fortune with this terrible condition of things staring him in the face? What good would the ownership of the New York Central Railroad be when there is a certainty that the entire structure, road-bed, depots, rolling stock and everything will be utterly destroyed within my life-time? Under such circumstances who would care to own a city, or to possess in fee simple the cattle on a thousand hills? What is beef going to be worth then?

ONE FRANC.

“And then reputation. When the earth melts and the skyis rolled up like a scroll, where is your Shakespeare? Where is Milton, Byron, Burns, and the long list of men who have written that their names may be everlasting? The dust of Shakespeare will be mingled with that of the organ grinder across the street, and the pyramids will be of no more account than the dirt-heap on the other side, which the Street Commissioner never moves away. The libraries will all be destroyed, and in the general annihilation, clergymen, scholars, capitalists, life insurance agents, presidents, emperors, book agents and tramps will all stand upon a common level. One fragment of me may assume the character of an aerolite and astonish the natives of another planet, and another fragment may go to feed the sun and thus furnish heat for the shivering tramp on Mars, and mingled with me may be the iron that is now in the system of Vanderbilt.

“Therefore I have no desire for a name or money. Things are not sufficiently permanent to be desirable for an ambitious man.

“But speaking of the great cataclysm that is imminent, I did not hear any response to my application for a loan of a dollar to relieve my hunger. That is permanent, and will be till the universal smash-up.”

I gave the man a franc.

“It is little but it will do, it will assuage the pangs of hunger. A philosopher needs but little. Thank you. Farewell forever. In the smash that is to come, let us hope that our fragments may come together, and that we may sail through space in company.”

And he departed. He did not go to a restaurant, but he went, as straight as the bird flies, to the nearest brandy shop from which he emerged in a minute with his face illuminated. He did not live by bread alone.

Strasburg is rich in antiquity, rich in the quaintest old houses on the continent, houses that commence inland from the sidewalk, each story projecting above the one under it, the fronts filled full of carving of the quaintest and most curious description. These houses, some of them, count the years of their being by the hundreds, and Strasburg, sleepy old town that it is, either keeps them because she is too lazy to pull themdown, or because she really treasures them because of their age.

An American looking at them feels that time has gone backward with him, and that he has awakened in the fourteenth century.

Here you see the genuine Alsatian costume. The women are, as a rule, fine-looking, some of them pretty, and the style of dress fits their peculiar style of beauty. They wear immense bows of wide black ribbon, which stands up at the back of the head, and flares out at the sides like the wings of a wind-mill. This admits of no hat or any other head-gear, and its effect, though odd at first sight, is rather pleasing. However, anything looks well on a pretty woman, and the women of Alsace are all comely. They wear their gowns short, that the effect of shapely ankles and trim feet may not be lost, and altogether they are good specimens of femininity.

The peculiarity of the old houses in Strasburg, already spoken of, is greatly intensified by the huge storks’ nests that crown the large awkward chimneys of many of the houses. All Summer long, the great white storks live in Strasburg, until the cold weather drives them further south. Their nests are built on the tops of chimneys, of rough sticks and straw, and are very clumsy-looking affairs. But when there is a white stork standing in them, solemn and grave, on one leg, the other drawn closely under him, the effect is extremely ludicrous.

The stork is a peculiarly Strasburgian institution. It is considered a bad omen if a stork leaves a house, in the chimney of which he has once built his nest, and misfortune is certain, so they believe, to follow any one who mistreats or offends a stork.

There are thousands of legends about them, in brief the stork figures in everything Strasburgian. It is said that about a week before their departure in the Autumn, all the storks meet in a meadow outside of the city and hold solemn council, the oldest acting as chairman, and all talking and discussing things the same as men do, in their own language. It is not said that they come to blows in their debates, as American Congressmen do, but that is doubtless because they know only French and German usages. The stork is a well behaved bird.

ATone time Baden-Baden was one of the most famous gambling places in the world, but it is now simply a fashionable watering place, very like Saratoga. It is beautifully situated in the valley of the Oos, at the entrance to the Black Forest. During the time the gambling rooms flourished, great pains were taken to make it as attractive as possible. Long, wide avenues were laid out and planted with beautiful trees, picturesque drives were made, and all the natural advantages were improved a thousand fold, so that to-day it is one of the most beautiful spots imaginable.

The buildings, formerly the scenes of fashionable riot and dissipation, were built in the most elaborate manner and most lavishly decorated with beautiful frescoes by most eminent artists.

Nature made Baden-Baden a natural pleasure and health resort, and wherever men and women go for pleasure or health you may be sure of meeting vice in almost every form. The pleasure seekers must be perpetually stimulated, and those who haunt mineral springs to recover health, generally lost by persistent following of vicious practices, come expecting the waters to build them up to the resumption of the vices that brought them down. Consequently they gamble.

A few years ago Baden-Baden was the head centre of gambling for the world. The Frenchman, Englishman, German, Russian, American, Turk, and, for that matter, men of all nations came here to drink the waters, take the baths and gamble. Following in the train of the rich invalids came the professional gamblers, hawks following pigeons everywhere.

The government gave the exclusive right to manage a

THE GREAT HALL.

A FEW LEGENDS.

gambling house to one company, or rather one man. Originally a Frenchman named Benezet had it, paying some fortythousand dollars a year for the privilege of plucking fools, and when he died, leaving an immense fortune, his son-in-law, Dupressoir, continued the business. The money received by the government for this privilege was appropriated to the beautifying of the city and the other mineral water resorts in the Grand Duchy.

The gambling was done in an immense building which is now the “Conversation-haus,” and, if its walls could speak, many a tale, comic and tragic, they could tell.

You are assailed with all sorts of legends concerning it. There was a lady, of what nationality was never known, a woman who commenced gambling at the age of thirty-six, who always came to the rooms closely veiled, whose face was never seen. She played so much money invariably, leaving the rooms when she had lost or won her limit. It was never ascertained where she lodged, even. For twenty years she came to the rooms twice each day, staking a Napoleon (four dollars) on each turn of the wheel till she had lost or won fifty, and when that loss or that winning was accomplished she glided out, only to reappear the next day.

There is a wild legend prevalent that this mysterious being’s lover had lost his fortune at the tables, and had blown his brains out as a fitting finish to his folly, and that there was an irresistible impulse that brought her to the scene of his death, and kept her there all her life.

What interested Tibbitts the most in this legend was the statement that the lover lost all his money, and then blew out his brains.

“Any man, or alleged man,” said Tibbitts, “who would lose a fortune at such a game as they played here, must have great faith in his marksmanship, to try to hit his brains, no matter how short the range.”

The Young Man who Knows Everything wanted Tibbitts to make plain the point to the remark, and then the Professor had to go on and explain that what Mr. Tibbitts intended was that a man who would gamble at all must have an infinitesimal brain, so small, indeed, as to make it safe from the best marksman. The young man pondered over it a minute, and expressed himself satisfied.

There is another story of a woman, an old and haggard woman, who came every day and staked a Napoleon. She would not play unless there should be in the room a child, a young, fresh child; and she used to take the baby, and put her Napoleon in its little hand, and have it place it on the black or red, as the child’s whim dictated. And it is said that she generally won. Like all the rest of the mysterious beings of the gambling hall, this eccentric old lady disappeared one day, and was never seen again.

THE YOUNG MAN WANTED TIBBITTS TO MAKE PLAIN THE POINT.

THE REGULAR LEGEND.

It made little difference to her successors. The croupier,that calm, impassive man, raked in the Napoleons, or raked them out, the wheel revolved, and the life or death of one habitué of the place made no more difference than a footprint on the sands of the sea.

German students who, by extravagant living, encumbered themselves with debt, and who were afraid to apply at home for more money, came hither to make enough at gambling to restore themselves. They never did it. M. Benezet was not paying forty thousand dollars a year rent for the privilege of running a game at which improvident and extravagant young men could make up their folly—not he. His game was to take what they had left, without knowing or caring what became of them afterward.

The most common legend of them all is of the young man who walked calmly into the room with one hundred Napoleons, all he had left, and staked one piece after another, and lost invariably. Finally there was but one left. Turning to his friend, he remarked calmly, “This is my life I am wagering.” He put it upon the black, the wheel revolved, he lost.

Without a word this calm young man went out, and hung himself with his handkerchief to a tree, where his inanimate body was found the next morning.

This young man is very plentiful in Baden-Baden, though not much more so than the same kind of a fellow who, staking his last gold piece, draws a pistol from his pocket, and shoots himself at the table, the croupier paying no attention to it, and going on with the game as though it was a regular part of it, and an everyday occurrence.

Tibbitts frowned upon this legend severely, holding it to be unworthy of credence. “The young man,” said Tibbitts, “would have gone out and pawned his revolver for ten dollars, and taken another hack at it.”

And then this young man with a lively imagination went on to show that no matter how desperate the situation there is always a chance to get out. His story was to this effect:

A young New Yorker had gone to Paris with some thousands of dollars given him by his indulgent father, that he might see the world and study the languages. He studied French with a young grisette whose acquaintance he hadmade, and a very pleasant life he lived, till one morning the two discovered that they hadn’t a dollar between them left, that he had spent in three months with his syren what was sufficient to have supported him decently for three years. He dared not send home for more money, he could not leave his friend (that’s what they call it), and they had not enough to buy another meal.

The pawn shops were resorted to, till everything they had was gone and starvation stared them in the face.

They wept over it, and finally came to a conclusion. They loved each other dearly, they could not live apart, and so they decided to die together. She rushed out and pawned her last pair of stockings to purchase charcoal; they closed all the cracks in the room and lighted the coal, that its fumes might kill them in the regular Parisian style.

The girl died, but life was left in the young man. He rose and broke a window with a boot—no, he had pawned his boots—but with something, anyhow, and let in fresh air, which saved his life.

Then he turned and looked at the poor girl on the bed, her long hair flung negligently over the pillow, her face not wasted by disease, but plump and fresh as in life.

“Poor Fifine,” he sighed in agony; “how beautiful she is, and how I loved her and how she loved me! I shall never love again. From this time out my life, should I live, will be a desert waste. Should I live? Alas! I cannot, will not live. Why did I spring from that couch and break open the window? I cannot live without her; I will die with her.”

He commenced closing the window and looking for more charcoal, when something occurred to him.

“Come to think, I won’t die with her. Dying with her wouldn’t do her any good, and if I live, she, my love, will perpetually have something to look down upon.”

He merely walked down and reported a case of suicide, and after the investigation claimed the body as the next best friend, which was all right.

THE END OF THE LEGEND OF PARIS.

Then he sold the body to a medical college for dissection, for sixty dollars, and bought a second-class ticket and went home to New York and told his mother he had been robbed ofhis money, and got her to intercede with the irate father, and is, I believe, living in comparative luxury to-day.”

“How could he have got out on the street, if he had pawned all his clothes and his boots?” queried the Young Man who Knows Everything.

Tibbitts answered with asperity that there were so-called men everywhere in the world who perpetually strewed the salt of fact over the flowery fields of fancy. “You are the young man, I believe, who made me miserable the other day, by unearthing the fact that there never was a William Tell.”

The Professor, after thinking the tale over awhile, said that such a thing might have happened in Oshkosh, but never in Paris. In Paris the young woman would have lived and sold the body of the young man and started a café on the proceeds.

Then the young man remarked that revenge was a fool’s luxury, and that the New Testament precept about turning the other cheek, was not only sound in religion, but was the highest good sense, as religion always is. To nurse a hatred is more expensive than to keep a horse in feed or a fine watch in repair.

The gambling came to an end finally, and the romance of Baden-Baden with it. A decree withdrew the privilege of the establishment, another prohibited the establishing of other places, and on one fateful night in 1872, at twelve o’clock, the bankers turned off their lights, and Baden-Baden as a gambling resort was no more.

The old gambling house is now called the Conversationhaus and is used for concerts and balls, and is the favorite rendezvous for the fashionable world, especially during the time the band plays, in the morning, afternoon and evening. Then the wealth and fashion residing in Baden and representing all nationalities promenades the beautiful avenues, or, making little parties, sips beer and laughs and flirts to its hearts’ content.

Near the Conversationhaus is the “Trinkhalle,” where invalids, and those who wish to be thought invalids, drink the famous mineral waters that have made Baden celebrated all over the world. The rooms are magnificently furnished, and on the arcade in front of the building are some fine frescoes illustrating different legends of the Black Forest.

IN FRONT OF THE KURSAAL, AT BADEN.

The peculiar waters of Baden-Baden come from a great many springs in the hill-sides, and are conducted to the various bathing places in pipes, and they are as hot as you want them. One of the springs is known as Hell Spring, because of the temperature of the water, one would suppose, but the Badenese have another reason for its name. Of course they have a legend for it, which runs thus:

THE LEGEND OF THE HELL SPRING.

A great many centuries ago an irascible and very wicked old man who possessed the ground on which the spring is, had, as a matter of course, a beautiful and supernaturally good daughter. By the way, I never could understand why excessively wicked men in legends always had so sweet a lot of daughters, but I suppose it is necessary in order to have legends.

This daughter was beloved by the son of a neighboring noble who was at feud with her father, and, as a matter of course, the old man opposed the match. The present hot spring was then as cold as ice and a most delicious water for drinking, of which the old man was very fond, which statement proves the legend to be false. No German noble in this or any other period of the world’s history ever knew whether the water on his estate was good for drinking or not. He may have tested it for other purposes, but never for a beverage. He prefers wine or beer.

One day going down to his pet spring he found his girl there, and with her her lover. He was enraged, and when the young man told him he loved his daughter and would wed her, he exclaimed with a horrible oath:

“Wed her! You may wed her when this spring is as hot as hell, and when that happens I will drink to your nuptials in its waters!”

No sooner said than done. The spring changed from its lovely greenish blue to a sulphurous and salty color. Great jets of gas with an unpleasant smell issued, and the water boiled up quite as hot as the place the profane old man had indicated as a standard. And Satan himself, with tail and hoofs, and everything complete, appeared, from where none of the three could determine, and politely handed him a goblet of the boiling water.

He had sworn an oath, and there was no going back upon it. So he took the goblet and swallowed the contents and rolled over in agony and died, as I should suppose any one would.

The young man married the girl, and I doubt not his descendants are interested in the bath houses supplied from the springs.

It isn’t much of a legend, indeed with a little practice Ibelieve I could write a better one myself, but it is as they gave it to me.

THE SWIMMING BATH.

UP THE MOUNTAIN.

The grand bathing houses are on a scale of magnificencethat is truly wonderful, and one almost feels like shamming illness simply to enjoy their luxury. Nothing that money can buy, and in Europe as in America, it will buy almost anything, has been spared to make them as attractive to the eye and the other senses as possible. They make up Baden’s stock in trade, and Baden is too good a merchant not to have attractive wares for sale.

One of the favorite excursions from Baden is up the hill to the south of the city to the old castle, the walls of which are said to have been built in the third century, when the Romans constructed fortifications here. From the twelfth century till the completion of the new castle nearer the city, the old Schloss was the residence of the Margraves of the Duchy.

The road leading to the castle winds up the Battert, giving some beautiful views of the valley, with Baden, rich with its luxuriant foliage, nestling at the foot of the Black Mountains, whose dark profile stretches away off far to the north.

Before reaching the steep portion of the ascent, the ladies of the party were provided with donkeys.

The Professor, whose age and avoirdupois rendered steephill climbing a matter of great difficulty, determined that he would ride.

A diminutive donkey, scarcely larger than a good sized Newfoundland dog, was assigned to him, and a most ludicrous sight it was as the party made its start up the hill.

A gentleman six feet in height, with very long legs and a remarkably protuberant abdomen, arrayed in a very ill-fitting coat, light trowsers, a tall hat, and enormous spectacles, with an immense cotton umbrella under one arm, is not a sight to inspire respect, even when it is traveling as infantry.

But take that figure and put it astride of a donkey so small that the rider’s legs have to be drawn up to keep the feet off the ground, and have that donkey a perverse and mischievous animal (most of them answer to this description), and it is about as ludicrous a sight as was ever vouchsafed to mortal ken.

Each donkey is led or driven, as the case may be, by a boy, and the German boy has all the elements of mischief in him that any other boy possesses. And so when this especial boy saw that the entire party were laughing at the Professor, hewisely determined to gain popularity by adding to the merriment. And so he would wink at the people following, and twist the donkey’s tail, and the intelligent animal, knowing what was expected of him, would kick up his heels, and the Professor, one hand busy with the bridle and the other with the umbrella under his arm, would objurgate as much as a Professor dared.

THE DONKEY ENJOYED IT HUGELY.

The donkey enjoyed it hugely, for he kicked up his heels with delight, and pranced from one side of the road to the other in an ecstacy of pleasure.

The portly gentleman didn’t seem to think it very funny, although at last he was compelled to join in the general laugh that went up at his expense.

TO THE OLD SCHLOSS.

Finally he beat the boy and the donkey both. When the donkey would kick up behind he simply dropped both feet to the ground and brought him to anchor; and when he attempted a shy to one side, one foot on the ground held himto his business; and catching the boy at the trick he took him by the arm, and, with a grip that long years of flagellating boys had perfected, pulled him up in front of him, and everything was pleasant again.

THE LICHTENTHAL AVENUE—BADEN.

As we toiled up the long hill the gathering clouds presaged a rain storm. Then they broke, and as we reached the old ruin the sun came out with great brilliancy, and gave us a magnificent view up and down the broad, fertile valley.

But, unexpectedly, before we had time to go through the various rooms of the castle the rain began to fall in torrents,which was uncomfortable, the roof having long years ago succumbed to time, which has no more respect for a margrave’s castle than it has for a laborer’s hut. Time is no aristocrat.

We sought shelter in a room that had been fitted up as a restaurant, and then we were treated to a genuine storm right from the Black Forest. The wind howled around the open spaces of the ruined wails, the rain dashed against the window panes in fitful gusts, while above all other sounds could be heard the creaking and moaning of the trees all around us, as they were bent and swayed by the storm. It required but a little stretch of the imagination to fill the room with gallant knights, and to believe it was the din and clatter of battle we heard without.

PROMENADE IN BADEN-BADEN.

We were sitting on the ground on which knights and ladies in the centuries past had sat and feasted. There was not an inch of space within a half mile of us that had not its story. Mailed knights in that very room had

“Carved their meat in gloves of steel,And drank red wine with their visors down.”

WAR AND CARDS.

And possibly their spirits were hovering over us. If they were, we did not know it; they did not materialize. Instead of the mailed knights and beardless pages and fair ladies of the middle ages, there was a party of Americans in tall hats and short coats, ladies in the latest possible Parisian walking dresses, and instead of the glorious game of war it was a simple game of euchre, which the men played with the sameearnestness that characterizes them at home in their business, and the ladies with that utter disregard of rule that characterizes feminine card playing everywhere. It is needless to observe that in the matter of wine the example of the old knights was followed, only we had no visors.

CHARCOAL BURNERS IN THE BLACK FOREST.

A party of Americans playing cards in the castle of awarlike king! Well! well! There are steamboats on Loch Katrine; there will be a railroad to Jerusalem, and the holy places will yet be illuminated with the electric light. There is no room to-day for sentiment.

This castle was built, originally, by the Romans, and fell into the hands of the Margrave of Baden in 1112. It was necessary in that day to have these strongholds, from which the margraves could issue and make war upon their neighbors, that being their principal business. It was continued as a residence for the Baden potentates till 1689, when Louis XV. of France demolished it, leaving it, less the ivy that has grown over it, as it is to-day.

Its principal use now is to give employment to the donkeys to get to it, and the selling of wine and refreshments to the tourists who hunger after the delightful view it affords.

The new Friedrichsbad is an imposing edifice built against the hillside upon which the springs are located. The exterior is a fine specimen of the Renaissance style of architecture, and is embellished with a great many fine statues, busts and medallions.

The interior is a marvel of completeness and elegance, being finer in all its details than any similar bathing establishment in the world. The wood work is all massive and elegant; the walls and ceilings are artistically frescoed; the bath tubs, large swimming baths, are cut out of solid marble, and are so arranged that the bather can go from one to another, securing any desired temperature without inconvenience.

The water comes from springs on the hillsides, at a temperature of 144° Fahrenheit, and is conveyed by pipes throughout the building, the pipes being so arranged that the water is gradually cooled. In this way one is enabled to bathe in any kind of water he desires. The yield is upwards of one hundred gallons a minute, and are said to be among the most efficacious mineral springs known, the solid ingredients, chiefly chloride of sodium, amounting only to three per cent.

BATHS IN BADEN.

In this magnificent structure, there are the common bath tubs, hewn out of solid blocks of marble and completely let into the floor, with steps leading down to them; large hipbaths, supplied with a continual stream of mineral water; an electric bathroom for inhaling the thermal water; baths for the cold water treatment and the cold shower baths; vapor baths, hot air baths, swimming baths of different degrees of temperature, supplied also with shower baths the temperature of whose water can be regulated by the bather, and vapor baths in boxes.

After taking as many of these as he desires, and having been rubbed in a room lurid with hot air, the bather is conducted to a large room where he is enveloped in a warm bath cloak. Then he is taken to a large, luxuriously furnished room where he lies down for half or three-quarters of an hour.

When he emerges from the building, he feels like a new man—or says he does, which is the same thing.

When The Young Man who Knows Everything made that remark, Tibbitts replied promptly that he most earnestly hoped the change would be permanent. “My young friend, if you feel symptoms of getting back to your original self, take more baths.”

Baden merits all the good things said of it. It is a delicious spot, and if one had nothing to do in life but enjoy it, I know of no place where, with money, he could get more out of it. Its people are hospitable, and its physicians will humor you to any disease you choose. If there is nothing the matter with you, they will prescribe just as cheerfully as though you had all the ills that human flesh is heir to, and will pocket their fees with a grace unexcelled. They have had vast experience with hypochondriacs, and know all about it.

THEREis hardly a man, woman or child in the world who has not heard of Heidelberg, and who does not know something of this famous little city of students, wine, beer, castle and casks. It is a place better known, probably, than any in Europe of its size and non-political importance, and it entertains more sight-seers than any other. It is well worth the attention given it.

Heidelberg is beautifully situated on the River Neckar, about twelve miles from its junction with the Rhine, and a more delightful spot for establishing the seat of a palatial residence does not exist in all Germany.

On the one side is a high range of hills, on the other the beautiful Neckar, the opposite bank of which is covered to the tops of the lovely hills with terraced vineyards.

The very first thing the tourist has to see is the old Schloss, founded by the Count Palatine Rudolph I., about the beginning of the fourteenth century. It has passed through remarkable events. Various princes and electors improved and fortified the original structure of Rudolph, until, in 1720, when Elector Carl Theador rebuilt it, it covered a vast extent of territory.

THE OLD SCHLOSS.

Situated on a spur of the Königestuhl, it is surrounded on three sides by beautiful woods, while on the fourth the River Neckar flows past the town down a wondrously beautiful valley, and loses itself in the Rhine, twelve miles below. The outside walls are plain and unpretending, being designed entirely for defense. But inside, the façades are embellished with fine carvings, allegorical figures, the window arches having medallions of eminent men of ancient times. In niches aroundthe front, facing the entrance, are statues of the sixteen Counts Palatine. This front is thought to be the most magnificent, architecturally, of any of the four, combining, as it does, four different styles: Doric, Tuscan, Ionic and Corinthian. It certainly is very imposing, and before it was battered and disfigured by cannon balls, during the war of 1693, it must have been a wonderfully fine piece of work.

HEIDELBERG CASTLE, INSIDE THE COURT.

The regular thing to do at Heidelberg is to go through thegreat, gloomy subterranean passages that wind in and out under the massive pile. It is not a cheerful trip, but it gives one a good idea of the solidity of ancient masonry, and of the security of their old dungeons.

The Grand Balcony is a wide, well-built terrace on the river side of the castle. From this point the view is magnificent, the whole Neckar valley being spread out like a map, below us. Then we go on through great rooms, whose ivy-covered walls once resounded with song and merry jest, to the huge tower at the eastern angle of the castle. This old tower is, or was, rather, a monster, being ninety-three feet in diameter, with walls twenty-one feet thick. In 1689, when the French General, Melac, was obliged to surrender the castle and town to the Germans, he blew up the fortifications and set the castle on fire. The attempt to demolish the tower was only a partial success. The walls were so thick and so well built that the explosion only detached about a half of it, which fell, a solid mass, into the moat, where it is to-day, as solid as it was two centuries ago, though now its rough sides are covered with shrubs and ivy.

The best view of the castle in its entirety is from the Great Terrace, quite a little distance from the garden that surrounds the grand old ruin. From this height is seen the beautiful valley, with the town spread out in irregular shape on the banks of the Neckar. Across a deep ravine, beautifully clothed with green, is the ruined castle, standing out in bold relief, the ruined tower, the dismantled walls, the grand promenade making a picture of rare beauty.

The castle is decidedly the finest structure of the kind in Europe, beautiful in its location, beautiful in its design, and beautiful even in its ruin.

Like most things that are interesting in these old countries, it is, however, a remembrance of the days when force was the only law, when the sword and the spear were the only arbiters, and he who had command of the most of them was the ruler.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CASTLE.

It has had many masters. In 1685 Louis XIV., of France, set up a claim to the country and invaded it. Of course he had no earthly right to it, any more than the then occupant, but that didn’t matter. They didn’t split hairs in those days.

When a king wanted an adjoining country he simply figured up how many cut-throats he had and how many cut-throats the king had that he proposed to go for, and if he had more cut-throats than the other king, why he went for him.

And so Count Melac, Louis’s chief cut-throat, assailed Heidelberg, and the city and castle capitulated to him. He occupied it during the Winter of 1688, but as the German armies were approaching in too great force to suit his notions, in March, 1689, he evacuated the place, having first blown up the fortifications and burned the town, and made what havoc he could. Four years later the French finished the destruction, then the Germans rebuilt it in part, but, as if fate had a spite against it, it was struck by lightning shortly after and was abandoned as a fortress and palace, and so it stands to-day.

Ruin as it is, it is the most wonderful combination of nature and art I have ever seen or ever expect to. The old kings who built it had good eyes for effect as well as defense. The mountain is three hundred and thirty feet above the river, and it is a precipice inaccessible except by winding paths, which, when fortified, an hundred men might hold against ten thousand. This before the days of rifled guns. Our present artillery would knock the place as it was into a cocked hat in an hour. But in those smooth-bore days it was a place of strength, and could only be taken by a systematic siege.

We are much obliged to the French for one piece of vandalism. When they evacuated it the last time they tried to blow up the principal round tower. They placed a frightful amount of powder in it, and it exploded, but so well had the work been built that it merely broke off about a third of it, which toppled over into the moat and still lies there as it fell. The walls at the point where the break is, are twenty feet thick, and are as solid as a rock. There was no shoddy in this work. There needed to be no shoddy, for the work cost the Rhine robbers who built it nothing. They confiscated the quarries for the stone, and then drafted a sufficient force of men from all parts of their dominions to do the work, feeding them upon black bread and sour wine, which they seized also, making the building of almost any kind of a castle a very cheap affair.

It is a curious place—this reminiscence of the past. Thereare miles of halls, of passages, secret and open; there are drawbridges and turrets, and posts for warders; there is the enormous terrace, overlooking the beautiful Neckar and the vine-clad hills on the opposite bank; there is the wonderful court in the interior, the walls facing inward, rich in statuary and wondrous carving, grandly even though a ruin.

Imagine this vast structure when it was itself, filled with knights and ladies, on the night of some festival! Think of it, with lights gleaming from every window, the terrace filled with happy dancers, and the immense court full of pleasure-seekers!

There have been high jinks in the old Schloss. It must have been a wonderful place for everyone except the wretched peasantry—whose unrequited labor built it, whose unrequited labor supported it, and whose bodies defended it.

GREAT CASK—HEIDELBERG CASTLE.

It is well that it is in ruins. Its walls are royal, and, the fact is, I hate everything that savors of royalty.

THE STUDENTS.

In the castle is the famous tun of Heidelberg. This famous cask is twenty-six feet high and thirty-two feet long, and it holds, or rather held, for it has not been filled for several years,eight hundred hogsheads of wine, or two hundred and thirty-six thousand bottles. There is a platform on the top of it, upon which a cotillion can be comfortably danced.

The University at Heidelberg has in course of preparation for future beer drinking some eight hundred students, from all the countries of the world. I suppose they do pay some attention to studies, that they do attend lectures and recitations, and all that sort of thing; but all I saw them do was to drink beer, which they do in a way that no other class of young men in the world can. It is a large thing in Heidelberg to be able to drink more beer than any one else.

Smoking divides the honors with beer, although, as one student can smoke about as much as another, there is not that opportunity for display of talent that there is in beer drinking.

The students are all in societies or clubs, and each club wears a cap of a peculiar color. You go into one of the innumerable beer halls, and you see at one table students with blue caps, at another with red, and another with yellow, and so on. They never mix, and each society is at deadly feud with all the others. They sit, and sit, and sit, at these tables, drinking beer out of mugs, and smoking enormous pipes, mostly meerschaum, which they are at great pains to color.

As a red-capped student is supposed to be at mortal feud with all the other colored caps, duels are as common as beer—and I can’t say more than that. But a duel in Heidelberg is not a remarkably sanguinary affair. It is about as harmless as a French duel. They don’t fight with revolvers at ten paces, or shot-guns at thirty, or sabres, or anything of that sort; and instead of trying to kill each other, every possible precaution is taken not to kill at all. The weapons are rapiers, very sharp, and ugly enough, if the duelist really meant business; but both contestants are so swaddled in cloths, so wrapped in cotton defences, that any harm, aside from a cut in the face, is impossible. They fence and thrust, and do all sorts of things, the object being to inflict a wound upon the face; and the student receiving the wound is very proud of it, and if his flesh is healthy enough to heal without a scar, he tears it open. The scars he must have, for they are testimonials, as it were, of his bravery.

So you see on the streets of Heidelberg any number of students with their faces scarred and seamed, horribly disfigured, but not one of them would sell a scar for anything earthly.

Their beer-drinking proclivities I have referred to. Tibbitts had a letter to one of the red-capped students, who immediately introduced him to his club, and the result was—beer. The quantity that Lemuel could consume nettled his friend, and an attempt was made to put him under the table. The Professor, who believes that there is a devil in every drop of beer, warned Tibbitts against joining the party.

“They will get you intoxicated,” said the good old man.

“Will they? Perhaps they will. But, Professor, a young man of good physique, a son of nature, who has lived in Oshkosh, need not fear any man who comes of the effete civilization of Germany. Don’t fear the result of this encounter. I shall do credit to the old flag. To my beloved country I dedicate my stomach. I will fetch them all.”

And so Tibbitts sat down with them, and he drank as often as they did for a half hour, then he urged the drinking, and he called for larger mugs.

There was consternation among the students. Tibbitts’ friend was the President of the club, and a mighty man among the beer drinkers; indeed, he owed his official position to his prowess in this line, and here was a fresh American urging him to deeper and deeper draughts.

The contest waxed warm. One by one the feebler men dropped out until only two remained—Tibbitts and the President. Tibbitts was cool and collected, the President was hot and flurried.

Tibbitts made the President understand that he wanted larger mugs. He explained that he was thirsty, and that the time consumed in bringing the small mugs (they held nearly a quart) was so much waste, and that the effect of one quencher died out before another could be brought. What he wanted was a mug that held some beer. He was not a baby, but a man.

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