hamburg to lÜbeck.

The bleak, icy winter of North Germany is past. We have trodden its accumulated snows as they lay in crisp heaps in the streets of Hamburg; and have watched the muffled crowd upon the frozen Alster, darting and reeling, skating, sliding, and sleighing upon its opaque and motionless surface. We have alternately loved and execrated the massive German oven, which warmed us indeed, but never showed us a cheerful face. We have sipped our coffee or our punch in the beautiful winter garden of Tivoli, under the shade of lemon-trees, with fragrant flowers and shrubs around us; and finally, have looked upon the ice-bound Elbe with its black vessels, slippery masts, and rigid cordage, and seen the Hanoverian milk lasses skimming its dun expanse laden with their precious burdens. We have got over the slop and drizzle, and half-thawed slush, too; and the boisterous March wind dashes among the houses; and what is better than all, the fresh mornings are growing brighter and longer with every returning sun.

Away, then, out of the old city, alone on the flat, sandy road that lies between Hamburg and Berlin. Here we are, with hope before us, resolution spurring us on, and a twenty-eight pound knapsack on our backs. Tighten the straps, my friend, and you will walk easier with your load.

My journey as a workman on the tramp from Hamburg to Berlin I propose to tell, as simply as I can. I have no great adventures to describe, but I desire to illustrate some part of what has already been said about the workmen in Germany, and I can do this best by relating, just as it was, a small part of my own road experience, neither more nor less wonderful than the experience which is every day common to thousands of Germans.

I was very poor when I set out from Hamburg in the month of March, with my knapsack strapped to my back, my stick in my hand, and my bottle of strong comfort slung about my neck after the manner of a locket. I was not poor in my own conceit, for I had in my fob—the safest pocket for so large a sum of money—two gold ducats and some Prussian dollars: English money, thirty-five shillings. I thought I was a proper fellow with that quantity of ready cash upon my person, and a six weeks’ beard on my chin.

Many adieus had been spoken in Hamburg at our last night’s revel, but a Danish friend was up betimes to see me out of town. At length he also bade the wanderer farewell, and for the comfort of us both my locket having passed from hand to hand, he left me to tramp on alone, over the dull, flat, sandy road. There was scarcely a tree to be seen, and the sky looked like a heavy sheet of lead, but I stepped out boldly and made steady progress. The road got to be worse; I came among deep ruts and treacherous sloughs, and the fields on each side of the road were flooded. In some parts the road was a sand swamp, and the walk became converted into a gymnastic exercise; a leaping about towards what seemed the hard and knobby places that appeared among the mud. This exercise soon made me conscious of the knapsack, to which I was then not thoroughly accustomed. It was not so much the weight that I felt, but the tightness of the belt across the chest, which caused pain and impediment of breathing. Custom, however, caused the knapsack to become even an aid to me in walking.

A sturdy young fellow who did not object to mud was pushing his way recklessly behind me. I was soon overtaken, we exchanged kind greetings, and jogged on together, shoulder to shoulder. He had been upon his travels; had been in Denmark for two years, and had left Copenhagen to return to his native village, that lay then only eight or ten miles before us. What was his reason for returning? He was required to perform military service, and for the next two years at least—or for a longer time, should war break out—was doomed to be a soldier. He did not think the doom particularly hard, and we jogged on together in a cheerful mood until his knowledge of the ground became distressingly familiar, and he illustrated portions of the scenery with tales of robbery and murder. The scenery of the road became at every turn more picturesque. Instead of passing between swampy fields, it ran along a hollow, and the ground was on each side broken into deep holes with rugged edges; black leafless bushes stood out from the grey and yellow sand, while farther away in the background, against the leaden sky, there was a sombre fringe of thickly planted fir-trees. The daylight, dim at noon, had become dimmer as evening drew near; the grey sky darkened, and the tales of robbery and murder made my thoughts anything but cheerful. As the hills grew higher on each side of us, it occurred to us both that here was a fine place for a murder, and I let my companion go before, handling my stick at the same time as one ready to strike instantly if any injury were offered. I was just demonstrative enough to frighten my companion. We were a mere couple of rabbits. Each of us in his innocence feared that the other might be a guilty monster, and so we were both glad enough to get out of the narrow pass. On the other side of the glen the road widened, and my companion paused at the head of a little path that led down to a deeper corner of the hollow, and across the fields. That was his way home. He had but a mile to go, and was already anticipating all the kisses of his household. He wished me a prosperous journey; I wished him a happy welcome in his village; and we shook hands like two young men who owed amends to one another.

He had told me before we parted that there were two houses of entertainment not far in advance. Already I saw the red-tiled roof of one, that looked like a respectable farm-house. From the door of that house, however, I was turned away; and as the darkness of the evening was changing into night, I ran as fast as I was able to the next place of shelter. By the pump, the horse-trough, and the dirty pool I knew that there was entertainment there for man and horse. I therefore raised the wooden latch, and in a modest tone made my request for a bed. A vixenish landlady from the midst of a group of screaming children cried to me, “You can’t have a bed, you can have straw.” That would do quite as well, I said.

I sat down at a table in a corner of the large room, called for a glass of beer, produced some bread and sausage that I had brought with me from Hamburg, and made a comfortable supper. There was a large wood fire blazing on the ample hearth, but the landlord and his family engrossed its whole vicinity. The house contained no other sitting-room and no other sleeping accommodation than the one family bedroom and the barn.

While I was at supper there came in other wandering boys like myself. I had escaped the rain, but they had not; they came in dripping: a stout man, and a tall, lank stripling. The youth wore a white blouse and hat covered with oil-skin; his trousers were tucked halfway up his legs, and he had mud up to his ankles. We soon exchanged our scraps of information about one another. The stout man was a baker from LÜbeck on the way to Hamburg; the stripling, probably not yet out of his teens, was part brazier, part coppersmith, part tinman; had been three weeks on his travels, and had come, like myself, from Hamburg since morning. He was very poor. He did not tell us that; but he ordered nothing to eat or drink, and except the draught of comfort that he got out of my bottle, the poor fellow went supperless to bed. Not altogether supperless though, for he had some smoke. We made a snug little party in the corner, and talked, smoked, and comforted ourselves, after the children had been put to bed, and while the landlord, landlady, and an old grandfather told stories to each other in Low German by the fire. At nine o’clock the landlord lighted his lantern, and told us bluffly that we might go to bed. We therefore, having handed him our papers—passports and wander-books—for his security and for our own, followed into the barn. That was a place large enough to hold straw for a regiment of soldiers. It was a continuation of the dwelling-house, sheltered under the same roof. We mounted three rude ladders, and so got from floor to floor into the loft. Having guided us safely thither, he quitted us at once with a “good night;” taking his lantern with him, and leaving us to make our beds in the thick darkness as we could. The straw was not straw: it was short-cut hay, old enough to have lost all scent of hay, and to have acquired some other scents less pleasing to the nose; hay, trodden, pressed, and matted down, without a vestige in it of its ancient elasticity. There was nothing in it to remind us of a summer tumble on the hay-cock. The barn roof was open, and the March night wind whistled over us. I took off my boots to ease my swollen feet; took my coat off that I might spread it over my chest as a counterpane; and struggled in vain to work a hole for my feet into the hard knotted bank of hay. So I spent the night, just so much not asleep that I was always conscious, dimly, of the snoring of the baker, and awoke sometimes to wonder what the landlord’s cock had supped upon, for it was continually crowing in its sleep, on the barn-floor below. When morning broke we rose and had a brisk wash at the pump, scraped the mud from our boots, and breakfasted. The baker and I had plain dry bread and hot coffee. The tinman breakfasted on milk. He said it was better—poor fellow! he knew it was cheaper. By seven o’clock we were all afoot again, the baker journeying to Hamburg, the tinman and I road-companions to LÜbeck.

At noon, after a five hours’ walk, a pleasant roadside inn with a deep gable roof and snug curtains behind its lattice windows, tempted me to rest and dine. “We shall get a good dinner here,” I said; “let us go in.” The tinman would hear of no such thing. “We must get on to LÜbeck,” he replied. “Two more hours of steady walking and we shall be there.” Poor youth! At LÜbeck he could demand a dinner at his herberge, and he had no chance of any other. So we trudged on till the tall turrets and steeples of LÜbeck rose on the horizon. The tinman desired to know what my intentions were. Was I going straight on to Berlin without working? Should I seek work at LÜbeck? If not, of course I would take the viaticum. “I thought not,” I told him. “Ah, then,” he said, “you have some money.” The viaticum is the tramp-money that may be claimed from his guild by the travelling workman. Germans, like other people, like to take pills gilded, and so they cloak the awkward incident of poverty under a Latin name.

LÜbeck being in sight we sat down upon a grassy bank to make our toilet. A tramp’s knapsack always has little pouches at the side for soap, brushes, and blacking. We were not so near to the tall steeples as we thought, and it took us a good hour and a half before we reached the city gates. The approaches are through pretty avenues of young trees and ornamental flower-plots. The town entrance at which we arrived was simply a double iron gate, like a park gate in England. As we were about to pass in, the sentinel beckoned and pointed us towards a little whitened watchbox, at which we stopped to hand our papers through a pigeon-hole. In a few minutes the police officer came out, handed to me my passport with great politeness, and in a sharp voice bade the tinman follow him. Such is the difference between a passport and a wander-book. I, owner of a passport, might go whither I would: tinman, carrying a wander-book, was marched off by the police to his appointed house of call. I took full advantage of my liberty, and, as became a weary young man with two gold ducats in his fob, went to recruit my strength with the best dinner I could get. Having taken off my knapsack and my blouse, I soon, therefore, was indulging in a lounge upon the sofa of one of the best hotels in the sleepy and old-fashioned free city of LÜbeck.