The gardener gave it to the milkmaid and the milkmaid gave it to the errand-boy, the errand-boy gave it to the cook, who gave it to the head-waiter, who sold it to the individual who presented it to me. “It” was a bunch of great, sweet, half-blown June roses, that hung glowing on their stalks in their native garden at dawn, and before noon had experienced this life of change and adventure. It all happened in Wasseralfingen, a little town, where nothing else so momentous occurred during our brief visit, because it was Sunday, but where usually the celebrated iron-works make an immense disturbance, and interest visitors of a practical turn of mind. Our German friends bewailed the absence of the noise of the machinery on our account; believing that every American is born with a passionate devotion to mechanics, which increases through life, to the exclusion of a love of the beautiful. Recently, after relating a romantic story about a place on the Rhine, a German gentleman concluded his tale of love and chivalry by telling us that the Princess Somebody had established a girls' school there,—“which will interest you as Americans more than the story,” he added, with perfect honesty and naÏvetÉ.

“And why?” we meekly ask.

“Because Americans are practical and like useful things,” he responds cheerfully, with as thorough a conviction as if he had said that two and two made four.

We made no useless effort to induce him to believe that the thought of sixty or eighty bread-and-butter misses does not enhance for us the charm of a tradition-haunted spot, nor did we struggle to impress our friends' minds in Wasseralfingen that its Sabbath stillness was more agreeable to us than the stir and rush of the works. There are some fixed ideas in the mind of the average German which a potent hand ought to seize and shake out. “Why don't you write letters to Germans about America, instead of to Americans about Germany?” suggests a clever German friend. “They seem to be more needed.” It might really be worth while if Teutonic tenacity of opinion were not too huge a thing for a feeble weapon to slay.

To return to our Wasseralfingen,—most curious name!—it was pretty enough to look upon, as indeed most places in WÜrtemberg are. It has its nicely-laid-out little park or Anlagen, with a statue in the middle of it; and this is what small manufacturing towns at home are not apt to waste much time upon, unfortunately for their children and their children's children. An inn nestled among the trees, with irregular wings and low, broad roofs, and a very broad landlord, who looked like a beer-mug, gave us comfortable shelter for a night, and supper and breakfast in its garden,—supper with lights and pipes and beer-bottles, and cheerful conversation all around.

A short trip by rail brought us to Heidenheim, past fields of waving grain and pretty hills, shadows of great trees falling on velvety meadows, oats rising and falling like billows in the morning breeze, and scarlet seas of poppies. Never anywhere have I seen such a glory of poppies! Miles of them on both sides of the road, gleaming and glowing as the sunlight kissed them.

And then Heidenheim, a pretty town given to manufactures, to factories and mills, with the ruins of its castle Hellenstein on the height, and its memories reaching far back to Roman times. Here lived knights who were princes of profligacy, and gloried in their extravagance; who shod their steeds with silver and gold, and flung jewels away like water. One of them longed to have his whole estate transformed into a strawberry, that he could swallow it all in one instant. Of course this family came to a bad end. It spent all its money, and its castles got out of repair; the last of its armor was sold for old iron, and the last of the race died a pauper.

The ruins retain traces of Roman architecture in the earliest walls, with various additions in later times, and are not especially interesting upon close acquaintance. The old well sunk deep in the foundation of natural rock, where you pay ten cents and see a woman drop a stone three hundred and eighty-five feet, and wait breathlessly until you hear the dull plash deep down in the darkness, is their most exciting feature. The woman offered to give us some water, but it requires a whole hour to get it up, and we felt suspicious of what might be lying in those uncanny depths.

On the shady side of the castle, with broad reaches of fertile field and belts of wood lying before our contented gaze, we listened to Volkslieder, so old and sweet they carried our hearts back into dim ages, and we strongly felt the tie that binds us to the race where such strains have their birth. Suddenly, as our singers ceased, a group of village children sitting on a block of stone at a short distance took up the refrain,—an irregular row of flaxen heads against the light, their forms prominent against the deep, peaceful background, singing away with such zest we could only be silent and listen. Song after song, in praise of their loved land, they sang; all sweet, whether the smallest ones could always keep in tune or not. They told how Eberhard im Bart could lay his head on the knee of his poorest peasant and sleep in peace till morning broke, and many another sweet, old story; and, keeping time with their heads and making daisy-chains with their hands, they shouted,—

“Beautiful Suabia is our Heimath Land!”

Truly you can forgive the Germans for a multitude of sins when you hear how and what their common people sing.

[pg!95]