A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER XVIII

  [The Kindly Courtesy of Germans]

  In the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in thedelightful German summer fashion. The air was filled with the fragranceof flowers and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie of the"Naturalist Tavern" was all about us. There were great cages populouswith fluttering and chattering foreign birds, and other great cages andgreater wire pens, populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign.There were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable ones they were.White rabbits went loping about the place, and occasionally came andsniffed at our shoes and shins; a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck,walked up and examined us fearlessly; rare breeds of chickens and dovesbegged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven hopped about witha humble, shamefaced mein which said, "Please do not notice myexposure--think how you would feel in my circumstances, and becharitable." If he was observed too much, he would retire behindsomething and stay there until he judged the party's interest had foundanother object. I never have seen another dumb creature that wasso morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor, who could interpret the dimreasonings of animals, and understood their moral natures better thanmost men, would have found some way to make this poor old chap forgethis troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art, and so had toleave the raven to his griefs.

  After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient castle ofHirschhorn, and the ruined church near it. There were some curious oldbas-reliefs leaning against the inner walls of the church--sculpturedlords of Hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn inthe picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages. These things aresuffering damage and passing to decay, for the last Hirschhorn has beendead two hundred years, and there is nobody now who cares to preservethe family relics. In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and thecaptain told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter oflegends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I do not repeat histale because there was nothing plausible about it except that the Herowrenched this column into its present screw-shape with his hands--justone single wrench. All the rest of the legend was doubtful.

  But Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. Thenthe clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop, and the oldbattlemented stone wall, stretching up and over the grassy ridge anddisappearing in the leafy sea beyond, make a picture whose grace andbeauty entirely satisfy the eye.

  We descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved thisway and that down narrow alleys between the packed and dirty tenementsof the village. It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering,unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and beggedpiteously. The people of the quarter were not all idiots, of course, butall that begged seemed to be, and were said to be.

  I was thinking of going by skiff to the next town, Necharsteinach; so Iran to the riverside in advance of the party and asked a man there ifhe had a boat to hire. I suppose I must have spoken High German--CourtGerman--I intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me. Iturned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike thatman's average, but failed. He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr.X arrived, faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied thissentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: "Can man boat gethere?"

  The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. I can comprehendwhy he was able to understand that particular sentence, because by mereaccident all the words in it except "get" have the same sound and thesame meaning in German that they have in English; but how he managed tounderstand Mr. X's next remark puzzled me. I will insert it, presently.X turned away a moment, and I asked the mariner if he could not finda board, and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the purestGerman, but I might as well have spoken in the purest Choctaw for allthe good it did. The man tried his best to understand me; he tried, andkept on trying, harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use,and said:

  "There, don't strain yourself--it is of no consequence."

  Then X turned to him and crisply said:

  "_Machen sie_ a flat board."

  I wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man did not answerup at once, and say he would go and borrow a board as soon as he had litthe pipe which he was filling.

  We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have to go. Ihave given Mr. X's two remarks just as he made them. Four of the fivewords in the first one were English, and that they were also German wasonly accidental, not intentional; three out of the five words in thesecond remark were English, and English only, and the two German onesdid not mean anything in particular, in such a connection.

  X always spoke English to Germans, but his plan was to turn the sentencewrong end first and upside down, according to German construction, andsprinkle in a German word without any essential meaning to it, here andthere, by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood. He couldmake those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand him, sometimes, wheneven young Z had failed with them; and young Z was a pretty good Germanscholar. For one thing, X always spoke with such confidence--perhapsthat helped. And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called_Platt-Deutsch_, and so they found his English more familiar to theirears than another man's German. Quite indifferent students of Germancan read Fritz Reuter's charming platt-Deutch tales with some littlefacility because many of the words are English. I suppose this is thetongue which our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them. By and byI will inquire of some other philologist.

  However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men employed tocalk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but onlya crack between the logs--a crack that belonged there, and was notdangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disorderedimagination of the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a gooddegree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. As weswam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, we fell to swappingnotes about manners and customs in Germany and elsewhere.

  As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us, byobserving and noting and inquiring, diligently and day by day, hadmanaged to lay in a most varied and opulent stock of misinformation. Butthis is not surprising; it is very difficult to get accurate details inany country. For example, I had the idea once, in Heidelberg, to findout all about those five student-corps. I started with the White Capcorps. I began to inquire of this and that and the other citizen, andhere is what I found out:

  1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none but Prussians areadmitted to it.

  2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason. It hassimply pleased each corps to name itself after some German state.

  3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only the White CapCorps.

  4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth.

  5. Any student can belong to it who is European by birth.

  6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he be a Frenchman.

  7. Any student can belong to it, no matter where he was born.

  8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood.

  9. No student can belong to it who cannot show three full generations ofnoble descent.

  10. Nobility is not a necessary qualification.

  11. No moneyless student can belong to it.

  12. Money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has never been thoughtof.

  I got some of this information from students themselves--students whodid not belong to the corps.

  I finally went to headquarters--to the White Caps--where I wouldhave gone in the first place if I had been acquainted. But even atheadquarters I found difficulties; I perceived that there were thingsabout the White Cap Corps which one member knew and another one didn't.It was natural; for very few members of any organization know _all_ thatcan be known about it. I doubt there is a man or a woman in Heidelbergwho would not answer promptly and confidently three out of every fivequ
estions about the White Cap Corps which a stranger might ask; yetit is a very safe bet that two of the three answers would be incorrectevery time.

  There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing courteouslyto strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. Thisbow startles a stranger out of his self-possession, the first timeit occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something, in hisembarrassment, but it pleases him, nevertheless. One soon learns toexpect this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it; but tolearn to lead off and make the initial bow one's self is a difficultmatter for a diffident man. One thinks, "If I rise to go, and tender mybow, and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads to ignorethe custom of their nation, and not return it, how shall I feel, in caseI survive to feel anything." Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sitsout the dinner, and makes the strangers rise first and originate thebowing. A table d'h?te dinner is a tedious affair for a man who seldomtouches anything after the three first courses; therefore I used to dosome pretty dreary waiting because of my fears. It took me months toassure myself that those fears were groundless, but I did assure myselfat last by experimenting diligently through my agent. I made Harris getup and bow and leave; invariably his bow was returned, then I got up andbowed myself and retired.

  Thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not forHarris. Three courses of a table d'h?te dinner were enough for me, butHarris preferred thirteen.

  Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed theagent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties. Once at Baden-BadenI nearly lost a train because I could not be sure that three youngladies opposite me at table were Germans, since I had not heard themspeak; they might be American, they might be English, it was not safeto venture a bow; but just as I had got that far with my thought, one ofthem began a German remark, to my great relief and gratitude; and beforeshe got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciouslyreturned, and we were off.

  There is a friendly something about the German character which is verywinning. When Harris and I were making a pedestrian tour through theBlack Forest, we stopped at a little country inn for dinner one day;two young ladies and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us.They were pedestrians, too. Our knapsacks were strapped upon our backs,but they had a sturdy youth along to carry theirs for them. All partieswere hungry, so there was no talking. By and by the usual bows wereexchanged, and we separated.

  As we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at Allerheiligen, nextmorning, these young people entered and took places near us withoutobserving us; but presently they saw us and at once bowed and smiled;not ceremoniously, but with the gratified look of people who have foundacquaintances where they were expecting strangers. Then they spoke ofthe weather and the roads. We also spoke of the weather and the roads.Next, they said they had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding theweather. We said that that had been our case, too. Then they said theyhad walked thirty English miles the day before, and asked how many wehad walked. I could not lie, so I told Harris to do it. Harris toldthem we had made thirty English miles, too. That was true; we had "made"them, though we had had a little assistance here and there.

  After breakfast they found us trying to blast some information outof the dumb hotel clerk about routes, and observing that we were notsucceeding pretty well, they went and got their maps and things, andpointed out and explained our course so clearly that even a New Yorkdetective could have followed it. And when we started they spoke out ahearty good-by and wished us a pleasant journey. Perhaps they were moregenerous with us than they might have been with native wayfarers becausewe were a forlorn lot and in a strange land; I don't know; I only knowit was lovely to be treated so.

  Very well, I took an American young lady to one of the fine balls inBaden-Baden, one night, and at the entrance-door upstairs we were haltedby an official--something about Miss Jones's dress was not according torule; I don't remember what it was, now; something was wanting--her backhair, or a shawl, or a fan, or a shovel, or something. The official wasever so polite, and ever so sorry, but the rule was strict, and he couldnot let us in. It was very embarrassing, for many eyes were on us. Butnow a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ballroom, inquired into thetrouble, and said she could fix it in a moment. She took Miss Jones tothe robing-room, and soon brought her back in regulation trim, and thenwe entered the ballroom with this benefactress unchallenged.

  Being safe, now, I began to puzzle through my sincere but ungrammaticalthanks, when there was a sudden mutual recognition--the benefactressand I had met at Allerheiligen. Two weeks had not altered her good face,and plainly her heart was in the right place yet, but there was sucha difference between these clothes and the clothes I had seen her inbefore, when she was walking thirty miles a day in the Black Forest,that it was quite natural that I had failed to recognize her sooner. Ihad on _my_ other suit, too, but my German would betray me to a personwho had heard it once, anyway. She brought her brother and sister, andthey made our way smooth for that evening.

  Well--months afterward, I was driving through the streets of Munich in acab with a German lady, one day, when she said:

  "There, that is Prince Ludwig and his wife, walking along there."

  Everybody was bowing to them--cabmen, little children, and everybodyelse--and they were returning all the bows and overlooking nobody, whena young lady met them and made a deep courtesy.

  "That is probably one of the ladies of the court," said my Germanfriend.

  I said:

  "She is an honor to it, then. I know her. I don't know her name, but Iknow _her_. I have known her at Allerheiligen and Baden-Baden. She oughtto be an Empress, but she may be only a Duchess; it is the way things goin this way."

  If one asks a German a civil question, he will be quite sure to get acivil answer. If you stop a German in the street and ask him to directyou to a certain place, he shows no sign of feeling offended. If theplace be difficult to find, ten to one the man will drop his own mattersand go with you and show you.

  In London, too, many a time, strangers have walked several blocks withme to show me my way.

  There is something very real about this sort of politeness. Quite often,in Germany, shopkeepers who could not furnish me the article I wantedhave sent one of their employees with me to show me a place where itcould be had.