"_Emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies,
Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies;
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed
its air."
SOME WUeRTEMBERG TOWNS.
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 naivete.
"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 Wuertemberg 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.