This serenity of living was not got up for the stranger; it was not to
meet his market that a complex and artificial ease had been
constructed, bearing no relation to what lay beyond its limits. That
sort of thing is to be found among ourselves in isolated spots, though
far less perfect and far more expensive. Nauheim was merely a blossom
on the general tree. It was when I began my walks in the country and
found everywhere a corresponding, ordered excellence, and came to talk
more and more with the peasants and to notice the men, women and
children, that the scheme of Germany grew impressive to me.
So had it not been in 1870, as I looked back on my early impressions,
reading them now in my maturer judgment's light. So had it not been
even in 1882 and 1883, when I had again seen the country. We various
invalids of Nauheim presently began to compare notes. All of us were
going about the country, among the gardens and the farms, or across
the plain through the fruit trees to little Friedberg on its hill--an
old castle, a steep village, a clean Teutonic gem, dropped perfect out
of the Middle Ages into the present, yet perfectly keeping up with the
present. Many of the peasants in the plain, men and women, were of
those who brought their flowers and produce to sell in Nauheim--humble
people, poor in what you call worldly goods, but seemingly very few
of them poor in the great essential possession.
We invalids compared notes and found ourselves all of one mind. Ten or
twelve of us were, at the several hotels, acquaintances at home; every
one had been struck with the contentment in the German face.
Contentment! Among the old and young of both sexes this was the
dominating note, the great essential possession. The question arose:
What is the best sign that a government is doing well by its people--is
agreeing with its people, so to speak? None of us were quite so sure as
we used to be that our native formula, "Of the people, by the people,
for the people," is the universal ultimate truth.
Twice two is four, wherever you go; this is as certain in Berlin as
it is at Washington or in the cannibal islands. But, until mankind
grows uniform, can government be treated as you treat mathematics?
Until mankind grows uniform, will any form of government be likely to
fit the whole world like a glove? So long as mankind continues as
various as men's digestions, better to look at government as if it
were a sort of diet or treatment. How is the government agreeing with
its people? This is the question to ask in each country. And what is
the surest sign? Could any sign be surer than the general expression,
the composite face of the people themselves? This goes deeper than
skyscrapers and other material aspects.
I had sailed away from skyscrapers and limited expresses; from
farmers sowing crops wastefully; from houses burned through
carelessness; from forests burned through carelessness; from heaps of
fruit rotting on the ground in one place and hundreds of men hungry in
another place. I had sailed away from the city face and the country
face of America, and neither one was the face of content. They looked
driven, unpeaceful, dissatisfied. The hasty American was not looking
after his country himself, and nobody was there to make him look after
it while he rushed about climbing, climbing--and to what? A higher
skyscraper. It was very restful to come to a place where the spirit of
man was in stable equilibrium; where man's lot was in stable
equilibrium; where never a schoolboy had been told he might become
President and every schoolboy knew he could not be Emperor.
The students on a walking holiday from their universities often
wandered singing through Nauheim. Somewhat Tyrolese in get-up,
sometimes with odd, Byronic collars, too much open at the neck, they
wore their knapsacks and the caps that showed their guild. They came
generally in the early morning while the invalids were strolling at
the Sprudel. The sound of their young voices singing in part-chorus
would be heard, growing near, passing close, then dying away
melodiously among the trees.
A single little sharp discord vibrated through all this German harmony
one day when I learned that in the Empire more children committed
suicide than in any other country.
But soon this discord was lost amid the massive Teutonic polyphony of
well-being. Of this well-being knowledge was enlarged by excursions to
various towns. To Worms, for instance, that we might see the famous
Luther Monument. Part of the journey thither lay through a fine
forest. This the city of Frankfurt-am-Main owns and has forested for
seven hundred years; using the wood all the time, but so wisely that
the supply has maintained itself against the demand. I thought of our
own forests, looted and leveled, and of ourselves boasting our
glorious future while we obliterated that future's resources.
Frankfurt was there to teach us better, had we chosen to learn.