CHAPTER XXII
A Tramp Abroad | ||
22. CHAPTER XXII
From Baden-Baden we made the customary trip into the Black Forest. We were on foot most of the time. One cannot describe those noble woods, nor the feeling with which they inspire him. A feature of the feeling, however, is a deep sense of contentment; another feature of it is a buoyant, boyish gladness; and a third and very conspicuous feature of it is one's sense of the remoteness of the work-day world and his entire emancipation from it and its affairs.
Those woods stretch unbroken over a vast region; and everywhere they are such dense woods, and so still, and so piney and fragrant. The stems of the trees are trim and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color, with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness. A rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles; so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, and when they strike the moss they fairly seem to burn. But the weirdest effect, and the most enchanting is that produced by the diffused light of the low afternoon sun; no single ray is able to pierce its way in, then, but the diffused light takes color from moss and foliage, and pervades the place like a faint, greet-tinted mist, the theatrical fire of fairyland. The suggestion of mystery and the supernatural
We found the Black Forest farmhouses and villages
all that the Black Forest stories have pictured them.
The first genuine specimen which we came upon was
the mansion of a rich farmer and member of the Common
Council of the parish or
BLACK FOREST GRANDEE
[Description: Etching of a figure seated at a table, in a large
hat, great coat and boots, smoking a pipe.
]
THE GRANDEE'S DAUGHTER
[Description: A detailed, large etching of a young woman wearing a Bavarian style outfit, in a subdued mood, her left hand under her chin. ]The house was big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to
We became very familiar with the fertilizer in the Forest. We fell unconsciously into the habit of judging of a man's station in life by this outward and eloquent sign. Sometimes we said, "Here is a poor devil, this is manifest." When we saw a stately accumulation, we said, "Here is a banker." When we encountered a country-seat surrounded by an Alpine pomp of manure, we said, "Doubtless a duke lives here."
The importance of this feature has not been properly magnified in the Black Forest stories. Manure is evidently the Black-Forester's main treasure,—his coin, his jewel, his pride, his Old Master, his ceramics, his bric-a-brac, his darling, his title to public consideration, envy, veneration, and his first solicitude when he gets ready to make his will. The true Black Forest novel, if it is ever written, will be skeletoned somewhat in this way:
SKELETON FOR BLACK FOREST NOVEL
Rich old farmer, named Huss. Has inherited great wealth of manure, and by diligence has added to it. It is double-starred in Baedeker.*
When Baedeker's guide-books mention a thing and put two stars ** after it, it means well worth visiting. M.T.
[Interval of six months.]
Paul Hoch comes to old Huss and says, "I am at last as rich as you required,—come and view the pile." Old Huss views it and says, "It is sufficient,—take her and be happy,",—meaning Gretchen.
[Interval of two weeks.]
Wedding party assembled in old Huss's drawing-room. Hoch placid and content, Gretchen weeping over her hard fate. Enter old Huss's head bookkeeper. Huss says fiercely, "I gave you three weeks to find out why your books don't balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter; the time is up,—find me the missing property or you go to prison as a thief." Bookkeeper: "I have found it." "Where?" Bookkeeper (sternly,—tragically): "In the bridegroom's pile!—behold the thief,—see him blench and tremble!" [Sensation.] Paul Hoch: Lost, lost!",—falls over the cow in a swoon and is handcuffed. Gretchen: "Saved!" Falls over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms of Hans Schmidt, who springs in at that moment. Old Huss: "What, you here, varlet? Unhand the maid and quit the place." Hans (still supporting the insensible girl): "Never! Cruel old man, know that I come with claims which even you cannot despise."
Huss: "What, you? name them."
Hans: "Listen then. The world has forsaken me, I forsook
the world, I wandered in the solitude of the forest,
longing for death but finding none. I fed upon roots,
and in my bitterness I dug for the bitterest,
loathing the sweeter kind. Digging, three days agone,
I struck a manure mine!—a Golconda, a limitless Bonanza,
of solid manure! I can buy you all, and have mountain
ranges of manure left! Ha-ha, now thou smilest a smile!"
[Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine.
Old Huss (enthusiastically): "Wake her up, shake her up,
PAUL HOCH
[Description: Two small drawings of Bavarian figures (busts) smoking
large pipes.
]
HANS SCHMIDT
We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, in a very pretty village (Ottenhöfen), and then went into the public room to rest and smoke. There we found nine or ten Black Forest grandees assembled around a table. They were the Common Council of the parish. They had gathered there at 8 o'clock that morning to elect a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four hours at the new member's expense. They were men of fifty or sixty years of age, with grave good-natures faces, and were all dressed
We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses, water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints and Virgins. These crucifixes, etc., are set up in memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands.
We followed the carriage-road, and had our usual luck; we traveled under a beating sun, and always saw the shade leave the shady places before we could get to them. In all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike a piece of road at its time for being shady. We had a particularly hot time of it on that particular afternoon, and with no comfort but what we could get out of the fact that the peasants at work away up on the steep mountainsides above our heads were even worse off than we were. By and by it became impossible to endure the intolerable glare and heat any longer; so we struck across the ravine and entered the deep cool twilight of the forest, to hunt for what the guide-book called the "old road."
We found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the right one, though we followed it at the time with the conviction that it was the wrong one. If it was the wrong one there could be no use in hurrying; therefore we did not hurry, but sat down frequently on the soft moss and enjoyed the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes. There had been distractions in the carriage-road,—school-children, peasants, wagons, troops of pedestrianizing students from all over Germany,—but we had the old road to ourselves.
Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious
ant at his work. I found nothing new in him,—certainly
nothing to change my opinion of him. It seems to me that
in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely
overrated bird. During many summers, now, I have watched him,
when I ought to have been in better business, and I have
not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any
more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant,
of course; I have had no experience of those wonderful
Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies,
hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular
ants may be all that the naturalist paints them,
but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham.
I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest-working
creature in the world,—when anybody is looking,—but his
leather-headedness is the point I make against him.
He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what
does he do? Go home? No,—he goes anywhere but home.
He doesn't know where home is. His home may be only
three feet away,—no matter, he can't find it. He makes
his capture, as I have said; it is generally something
which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else;
it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be;
he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it;
he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts;
not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly
and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful
of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead
of going around it, he climbs
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
[Description: Small drawing of an ant backing up over a pebble,
dragging some food.
]
FRIENDS
[Description: Small drawing of two ants contending with a morsel. ]There in the Black Forest, on the mountainside, I saw an ant go through with such a performance as this with a dead spider of fully ten times his own weight. The spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to resist. He had a round body the size of a pea. The little ant,—observing that I was noticing,—turned him on his back, sunk his fangs into his throat, lifted him into the air and started vigorously off with him, stumbling over little pebbles, stepping on the spider's legs and tripping himself up, dragging him backward, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him up stones six inches high instead of going around them, climbing weeds twenty times
PROSPECTING
[Description: Drawing of two ants dragging morsel on a flower stem. ]Science has recently discovered that the ant does not lay up anything for winter use. This will knock him out of literature, to some extent. He does not work, except when people are looking, and only then when the observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be taking notes. This amounts
The ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing, where we had not suspected the presence of much muscular power before. A toadstool,—that vegetable which springs to full growth in a single night,—had torn loose and lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice its own bulk into the air, and supported it there, like a column supporting a shed. Ten thousand toadstools, with the right purchase, could lift a man, I suppose. But what good would it do?
All our afternoon's progress had been uphill. About five or half past we reached the summit, and all of a sudden the dense curtain of the forest parted and we looked down into a deep and beautiful gorge and out over a wide panorama of wooded mountains with their summits shining in the sun and their glade-furrowed sides dimmed with purple shade. The gorge under our feet,—called Allerheiligen,—afforded room in the grassy level at its head for a cozy and delightful human nest, shut away from the world and its botherations, and consequently the monks of the old times had not failed to spy it out; and here were the brown and comely ruins of their church and convent to prove that priests had as fine an instinct seven hundred years ago in ferreting out the choicest nooks and corners in a land as priests have today.
A big hotel crowds the ruins a little, now, and drives a brisk trade with summer tourists. We descended into the gorge and had a supper which would have been very satisfactory if the trout had not been boiled. The Germans are
"Baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn't things for a hungry man to hanker after."
We went down the glen after supper. It is beautiful,—a mixture of sylvan loveliness and craggy wildness. A limpid torrent goes whistling down the glen, and toward the foot of it winds through a narrow cleft between lofty precipices and hurls itself over a succession of falls. After one passes the last of these he has a backward glimpse at the falls which is very pleasing,—they rise in a seven-stepped stairway of foamy and glittering cascades, and make a picture which is as charming as it is unusual.
CHAPTER XXII
A Tramp Abroad | ||