IT was comfort to get out of the beaten routes of tourists, and find yourself in a city where you do not hear English, and where the sight-seer with the inevitable guide book and field-glass, does not display himself. It was a relief to get into a city that had not been half Anglicised and Americanized by the constant stream of tourists that pour over Europe every Summer, where you could see Germany and the Germans, pure and simple. Such a place is Mannheim, at the confluence of the Rhine and Neckar, twelve miles below Heidelberg.

Mannheim is a delicious old city, once the seat of the grand Dukes of Baden, but now the seat of what is a great deal better than grand dukes, much merchandising and manufacturing. It is the only city in Europe that is laid out like Philadelphia, in regular squares.

The principal pride of the Mannheimers is their theater, and the Mannheimers have every reason to be proud of it, for, in addition to its being one of the best conducted in Europe, it is where Schiller and other great German poets won their first successes.

The Germans amuse themselves at public cost whenever possible. For instance, this beautiful theater, which contains costumes and stage sets for all the standard operas, is supported by the city government. There is a small fee for admission, (I believe the most expensive seat in the house is a trifle less than a dollar, and ranging down from that to ten cents), but the deficiency is put upon the tax duplicate and paid the same as other taxes.

Nowhere in Europe are better performances given, either operatic or dramatic. The principal characters are assigned to artists of the very highest order, the orchestra is made up of picked musicians, every one a soloist, and the chorus is not that mass of associated howlers that drive us mad in America; but the members are trained singers, as well as actors.

For the presentation of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” there was an orchestra of fifty-eight in number, a chorus of two hundred and fifty, and as many more supernumeraries. Nowhere is the detail of a presentation so carefully and conscientiously worked out, and nowhere an opera more satisfactorily given than in this little German city of less than fifty thousand.

The singers enter into a contract with the Direction for a term of years, and if they sing or act the full term they may go elsewhere, but they are pensioned by the city for life. Their salaries are very small, but the resultant pension is so comfortable a thing that they never break their engagements and never do slovenly work.

The Sunday night we reached Mannheim, Wagner’s “Lohengrin” was given, the performance commencing at half-past five in the afternoon and continuing till eleven at night. It was not as in American opera houses. There wasn’t a note omitted, a song, or line of text cut; the entire opera as it came from the composer was given with a degree of conscientious care that the American party had never heard before.

Tibbitts was in a state of surprise all the time. First going to an opera, not a matinee, in daylight; and then another custom that was as novel and strange as the hour at which the performance began. After entering the vestibule we passed through a long hallway lined with shelves; on these shelves the gentlemen placed their hats, overcoats, canes and umbrellas, and then passed into the auditorium without getting any check for the articles so left.

“Imagine,” said Tibbitts, “an American theater with a free cloak room in the lobby! How many hats, coats and walking sticks would be left by the time the entertainment was over? Think of such a thing in New York, or even Oshkosh! Why, in Oshkosh the boys out of one such audience would supply themselves with overcoats, hats and umbrellas for a year. It is a temptation even to me, as well as I have been brought up.”

The opera of Lohengrin is extremely difficult to render, but in this little German town of only forty-seven thousand inhabitants, it was done in a manner that would surprise the grand opera goers of New York, or even Paris or London. The stage settings were magnificent, every detail being most carefully and faithfully attended to.

Wagner’s music, to be fully appreciated and enjoyed, must be heard under the most favorable circumstances—at the Mannheim Court Theater, for instance. There is an individuality about it, an expression of thought by sound, that has never been equalled by any other composer. And when performed by such a company as that at Mannheim it rises to the sublime. Every member of that great company from the star down to the most humble member of the orchestra, was a thorough artist, and having had the very best training they interpreted the divine work of the great master in the same spirit in which it was conceived. It was a rare performance.

“Tannhauser” was the next opera, and performed as carefully as “Lohengrin”. It was enjoyed by the entire party except Tibbitts. He is not musical or asthetic. And so when the Young Man who Knows Everything went into raptures over the wonderful orchestra, Tibbitts spoke of it contemptuously as “sound factory.” And he jeered at the procession of pilgrims who, in the opera, are returning, to delicious music, from Rome, where they had been for their sins. “Yes, that’s the way of it. They load up with iniquity and go to Rome, if they are Catholics, or somewhere else if they are of other beliefs. Then they come back as good as new and entirely ready to take another load.”

He criticised other points in the opera. Tannhauser was in despair at having committed the unpardonable sin of heathen worship. “You see how it is. Other sinners who had merely committed murders and sins like that, made a pilgrimage to Rome and were absolved, but Tannhauser knew better. Religious power forgives everything except joining the opposition shop.” And he was particularly severe upon Tannhauser for confessing his sin to his love. “For,” he continued, “had he kept it to himself it would have been just as well. But I suppose it had to be. Had Tannhauser kept his counsel and married the girl, the opera would have closed at the second act.”

Mannheim is a purely commercial and manufacturing town. It enjoys a most picturesque situation. Its streets are regular and handsome, and in the outskirts of the city are numerous pretty parks, which add greatly to the beauty of the place.

When, in 1821, the Elector, Charles Philip had ecclesiastical differences with the Protestant citizens of Heidelberg, where up to that time he had his court, he transferred the seat to Mannheim, which from that time became an important place. The town was founded in 1606, and destroyed by the French eighty-three years later.

During the residence there of Charles Philip, the spacious castle, which occupies the entire southwestern portion of the town, was built, and though it suffered partial destruction in 1795, it has been restored, and with the lovely grounds surrounding it, forms one of the most attractive spots in Mannheim.

In appearance Mannheim is quite modern, though some of its buildings bear the impress of the hand of time. But as a rule, its wealthy citizens, with the enterprise and go-ahead activity that characterizes a mercantile people, have erected solid substantial buildings of the most approved modern style, which gives the city the look of wealth and business success it possesses.

The theater, next to the castle, is probably the oldest building in the town. It was constructed during the last century, and restored in 1854.

The people of Mannheim are industrious, hard-working Germans, full of enterprise and business tact. During business hours they are always on duty, but, with the purely German characteristic, as soon as business is over they devote themselves to innocent amusement with as much gusto as they do to their work during the day. And the German citizen is not selfish in his enjoyments. He wants his whole family to partake of them with him. So in the evening, in the parks where the bands play, you will see him surrounded by his whole family, wife, daughters and sons, sipping beer, chatting with friends, and enjoying the music. They are a social lot of people, these Germans, and know full well how to get all the pleasure there is in life.

They differ materially from the French and the English. The French are full of life and vivacity that spur them up to an unusual state of activity all the time. They must have a constant excitement, and noise, and show, or they are miserable. He is the most generous man in speech and the closest man in action in the world. He is effusive. He will, on a steamer, embrace you at parting, and insist upon your making his house your home when you visit Paris. He will swear that he will devote his whole time to you, that he will take it as a mortal affront if you do not command him, and all that. But don’t take too much stock in it. He doubtless means it while he is saying it, but when he reaches Paris, and you find him there, it is quite another thing. You are not necessary to his happiness any more, and in the most adroit and suave way he gets rid of you, and forever.

Very like people the world over, however. The man who applauds a virtuous sentiment the most vehemently at a theater is the very fellow who will go home and kick his wife, and the wildest approver of patriotic sentiments is the very man who goes to Canada to avoid a draft, or jumps the bounty for a thousand dollars. The Frenchman makes the best outward show of any one in the world, but his goodness is very thin. It will not bear the solid weight of actual use.

The Englishman delights in what he is pleased to think dignity, but what is really overweening conceit. He is pompous, dull and heavy. If he does a good thing, he does it in such a way as to make it an offense.

The German is neither the one nor the other. He goes through life tranquilly, in perfect content with himself, always making the best of his opportunities, and in a perfectly rational way getting all the enjoyment he possibly can.

He does not profess to be your friend unless he is so in good faith, and when he invites you to his house he always means it. He is rather careful about his friendships, for as he never falsifies in this, he needs to be, but when once said it is done. A rare good man to meet is your German. He has his peculiarities, but he is good and solid all the way through.

In Mannheim, as in all German communities, the absurd American fashion of treating is most sternly discountenanced and tabooed. The true German will not have it at all, at any price. Your friend asks you to join him in a bottle of wine, and you accept, but that does not mean that he pays for your drink. Not at all. He desires you to join him because you are his friend, because he likes your society, and because he wants to talk to you and have you talk to him. And when the bottle, or three, as a German says, is consumed each pays for what he has had and they go their way.

Consequently the bar-room beat so common in America is an unknown institution in Germany, and the beery, bloated pimpled faces hanging around public places waiting for invitations are never seen.

Mr. Tibbitts most heartily approved of this custom. He remarked that the American system of treating came very nearly ruining him. In Oshkosh he had a very large circle of close friends, who loved him dearly. They were very fond of him, why, he would not say, because he was a modest man. It might have been that they admired his physical graces, or possibly his intellectual endowments—men have tastes that cannot be accounted for. I met one gentleman on this trip who admired the Young Man who Knows Everything; that is, he said he rather liked him.

He was studying law in Oshkosh, and after wrestling all the forenoon with his studies he was, naturally, mentally as well as physically exhausted.

“I tell you,” said Mr. Tibbitts, “when a young and enthusiastic student at law has been poring all day over the pages of Walter Scott, or Dickens, or Thackeray, with only an occasional intermission at a beer-shop across the street, without feeling something like a squeezed lemon, he is a strong man indeed. I am physically fragile, and my active mental nature makes fearful drains upon my body.

“And so on my way to my boarding house for dinner I was accustomed to stop over a minute at the Spread Eagle Hotel, to take one solitary cock-tail, which I really needed as a bracer, as it were, to the system; something that would encourage nature to the point of taking in a full meal, a meal that would hold me up to the work of the afternoon.

“Now here is where the infernalism of the American system comes in. There would be at the bar every day at the same hour seven fellows, all good, jolly men, all particular friends of mine, who came there, as I did, for just one drink. Now, understand, I went in there for one drink, which I felt I needed, and one drink only. But seeing the other seven in classical poses about the bar, I could do no less than to ask them to join me, which, in the freshness of youth and the first blush of a strong manhood, they always did promptly. After a minute of joyous conversation, Snedeker would wink at the barkeeper, who would set before us another. More talk, a little more cheerful than before, and Wilson would insist upon all drinking with him. Still more talk, and Adams would consider it an offense if we did not take just one more with him.

“By this time any one of us would have taken something with anybody, for good sense, that faithful though easily overcome sentinel over our passions, had been driven out, and we were on the high road to inebriety. And there we would stand, and stand, taking ‘just another one,’ till we had forgotten all about dinner and everything pertaining to life, except of that article contained in the bottles before us.

“I have known these incidents to cover a great space of time and much territory. I have gone into the Spread Eagle for just one cock-tail, and in consequence of the infernal American system of treating, have found myself a day or two later in St. Louis, paying a most recklessly incurred hotel bill from money obtained by pawning my watch and overcoat. And once I extended the excursion as far as New Orleans, and probably would have gone on through Mexico if delirium tremens had not kindly put in an estopper.

“If we did in America as they do in Germany I should have gone in and taken one cock-tail and gone to my dinner and returned to my studies, and gone home to my supper and have been a good and useful citizen.”

And Tibbitts having got fairly launched upon the wide ocean of drinking continued:

“Americans are fools in their way of drinking. All other peoples have a defined idea of what they want to accomplish with stimulants, but the American has not. Your Englishman wants to get stupid drunk; he wants forgetfulness, which I can’t blame him for. Were I living in England I should want forgetfulness in large doses. I don’t blame an Englishman, condemned to London climate and London customs, for drinking. The Frenchman and German drink just enough to produce the requisite hilarity, the general good feeling which light stimulants in moderation produces, and then they quit. An American does nothing of the sort. He drinks through all the stages, the slightly exhilerant, the mild hilarious, the boisterous idiotic, the brutally quarrelsome, the pitiful maudlin, and then slips off his chair harmless because helpless.

“Why, I have heard a nine-tenths drunken man rouse up his companion by shaking him, with the appeal: ‘Jimmy, rouse up! Can’t you stand another one?’

“Just think of it! In this fellow’s case there was no pleasure to be had from the drinking of ‘another one.’ His poor, outraged stomach rebelled against it, the very smell of it was death, and the taste worse than death, and yet he was asked if he could not endure ‘another one!’ He was asked if his abused system could not be further outraged. And he did manage to stagger up to the bar and swallow another dose of poison, which was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. His indignant stomach deposited it on the floor with great promptness. A moment’s rest, and he did take ‘another one,’ and subsided into a miserable sleep.

“I have seen so much of the infernalism of the American treating system that I could deliver a wonderful lecture upon that and kindred temperance subjects.”

“Why don’t you lecture on temperance?” asked one of the party.

“Alas! I am not a reformed drunkard,” was Tibbitts reply.

Then up spoke the Young Man who Knows Everything.

“My dear sir, all you have to do is to reform.”

Tibbitts disdained to answer this, and walked moodily away.