We left Switzerland, as we entered it, in a rain,--a kind of double
baptism that may have been necessary, and was certainly not too heavy a
price to pay for the privileges of the wonderful country. The wind blew
freshly, and swept a shower over the deck of the little steamboat,
on board of which we stepped from the shabby little pier and town of
Romanshorn. After the other Swiss lakes, Constance is tame, except at
the southern end, beyond which rise the Appenzell range and the wooded
peaks of the Bavarian hills. Through the dash of rain, and under the
promise of a magnificent rainbow,--rainbows don't mean anything in
Switzerland, and have no office as weather-prophets, except to assure
you, that, as it rains to-day, so it will rain tomorrow,--we skirted the
lower bend of the lake,--and at twilight sailed into the little harbor
of Lindau, through the narrow entrance between the piers, on one of
which is a small lighthouse, and on the other sits upright a gigantic
stone lion,--a fine enough figure of a Bavarian lion, but with a
comical, wide-awake, and expectant expression of countenance, as if
he might bark right out at any minute, and become a dog. Yet in the
moonlight, shortly afterward, the lion looked very grand and stately,
as he sat regarding the softly plashing waves, and the high, drifting
clouds, and the old Roman tower by the bridge which connects the Island
of Lindau with the mainland, and thinking perhaps, if stone lions ever
do think, of the time when Roman galleys sailed on Lake Constance, and
when Lindau was an imperial town with a thriving trade.
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. I knew 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. “I knew 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 I forgot 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.