On board the little steamer was an American, accompanied by two ladies, and traveling, I thought, for their gratification, who was very anxious to get on faster than he was able to do,--though why any one should desire to go fast in Europe I do not know.One easily falls into the habit of the country, to take things easily, to go when the slow German fates will, and not to worry one's self beforehand about times and connections.But the American was in a fever of impatience, desirous, if possible, to get on that night.Iknew he was from the Land of the Free by a phrase I heard him use in the cars: he said, "I'll bet a dollar." Yet I must flatter myself that Americans do not always thus betray themselves.I happened, on the Isle of Wight, to hear a bland landlord "blow up" his glib-tongued son because the latter had not driven a stiffer bargain with us for the hire of a carriage round the island.
"Didn't you know they were Americans?" asks the irate father."Iknew it at once."
"No," replies young hopeful: "they didn't say GUESS once."And straightway the fawning-innkeeper returns to us, professing, with his butter-lips, the greatest admiration of all Americans, and the intensest anxiety to serve them, and all for pure good-will.The English are even more bloodthirsty at sight of a travelere than the Swiss, and twice as obsequious.But to return to our American.He had all the railway timetables that he could procure; and he was busily studying them, with the design of "getting on." I heard him say to his companions, as he ransacked his pockets, that he was a mass of hotel-bills and timetables.He confided to me afterward, that his wife and her friend had got it into their heads that they must go both to Vienna and Berlin.Was Berlin much out of the way in going from Vienna to Paris? He said they told him it was n't.At any rate, he must get round at such a date: he had no time to spare.
Then, besides the slowness of getting on, there were the trunks.He lost a trunk in Switzerland, and consumed a whole day in looking it up.While the steamboat lay at the wharf at Rorschach, two stout porters came on board, and shouldered his baggage to take it ashore.
To his remonstrances in English they paid no heed; and it was some time before they could be made to understand that the trunks were to go on to Lindau."There," said he, "I should have lost my trunks.
Nobody understands what I tell them: I can't get any information."Especially was he unable to get any information as to how to "get on." I confess that the restless American almost put me into a fidget, and revived the American desire to "get on," to take the fast trains, make all the connections,--in short, in the handsome language of the great West, to "put her through." When I last saw our traveler, he was getting his luggage through the custom-house, still undecided whether to push on that night at eleven o'clock.But Iforgot all about him and his hurry when, shortly after, we sat at the table-d'hote at the hotel, and the sedate Germans lit their cigars, some of them before they had finished eating, and sat smoking as if there were plenty of leisure for everything in this world, A CITY OF COLORAfter a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, is called an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from our view the Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant country, past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with vines, gay with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds of flowers, past switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at the switches and raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in a military salute, as we go by, we come into old Augsburg, whose Confession is not so fresh in our minds as it ought to be.Portions of the ancient wall remain, and many of the towers; and there are archways, picturesquely opening from street to street, under several of which we drive on our way to the Three Moors, a stately hostelry and one of the oldest in Germany.
It stood here in the year 1500; and the room is still shown, unchanged since then, in which the rich Count Fugger entertained Charles V.The chambers are nearly all immense.That in which we are lodged is large enough for Queen Victoria; indeed, I am glad to say that her sleeping-room at St.Cloud was not half so spacious.
One feels either like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in a lofty chamber, say thirty-five feet square, with little furniture, and historical and tragical life-size figures staring at one from the wall-paper.One fears that they may come down in the deep night, and stand at the bedside,--those narrow, canopied beds there in the distance, like the marble couches in the cathedral.It must be a fearful thing to be a royal person, and dwell in a palace, with resounding rooms and naked, waxed, inlaid floors.At the Three Moors one sees a visitors' book, begun in 18oo, which contains the names of many noble and great people, as well as poets and doctors and titled ladies, and much sentimental writing in French.It is my impression, from an inspection of the book, that we are the first untitled visitors.
The traveler cannot but like Augsburg at once, for its quaint houses, colored so diversely and yet harmoniously.Remains of its former brilliancy yet exist in the frescoes on the outside of the buildings, some of which are still bright in color, though partially defaced.