Марк Твен
A Tramp Abroad
Chapter XXVI
The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. All summer long the tourists flock to that church about six o’clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen to the noise. They don’t stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. This tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and best organ in Europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favorable place to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true, there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. Then right away the organist would let go another avalanche.
The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting.
The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff – for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.
Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion – and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.
Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. None of these qualities are kingly but the last. Taken together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. He knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be the king – but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good – he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then – but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. His comprehension was always a train or two behindhand. If a national toe required amputating, he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first perceived that the toe needed cutting off – so he cut it off; and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the disease had reached the thigh. He was good, and honest, and well meaning, in the matter of chasing national diseases, but he never could overtake one. As a private man, he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was strictly contemptible.
His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of August, when he allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, and forbade them to shed the “sacred French blood” purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit of Saint Louis had descended upon him. It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which would answer just as well to remember the 10th of August by.
Martyrdom made a saint of Mary Queen of Scots three hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her saintship yet. Martyrdom made a saint of the trivial and foolish Marie Antoinette, and her biographers still keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, while unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, she supplied – the instinct to root out and get rid of an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him. The hideous but beneficent French Revolution would have been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, or even might not have happened at all, if Marie Antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born. The world owes a great deal to the French Revolution, and consequently to its two chief promoters, Louis the Poor in Spirit and his queen.
We did not buy any wooden images of the Lion, nor any ivory or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones, or even any photographic slanders of him. The truth is, these copies were so common, so universal, in the shops and everywhere, that they presently became as intolerable to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually becomes to the harassed ear. In Lucerne, too, the wood carvings of other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look upon when one saw them occasionally at home, soon began to fatigue us. We grew very tired of seeing wooden quails and chickens picking and strutting around clock-faces, and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them. The first day, I would have bought a hundred and fifty of these clocks if I had the money – and I did buy three – but on the third day the disease had run its course, I had convalesced, and was in the market once more – trying to sell. However, I had no luck; which was just as well, for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when I get them home.
For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; now here I was, at last, right in the creature’s home; so wherever I went that distressing “HOO’hoo! HOO’hoo! HOO’hoo!” was always in my ears. For a nervous man, this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly, and aggravating as the “HOO’hoo” of a cuckoo clock, I think. I bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person; for I have always said that if the opportunity ever happened, I would do that man an ill turn.
What I meant, was, that I would break one of his legs, or something of that sort; but in Lucerne I instantly saw that I could impair his mind. That would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way. So I bought the cuckoo clock; and if I ever get home with it, he is “my meat,” as they say in the mines. I thought of another candidate – a book-reviewer whom I could name if I wanted to – but after thinking it over, I didn’t buy him a clock. I couldn’t injure his mind.
We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span the green and brilliant Reuss just below where it goes plunging and hurrahing out of the lake. These rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water. They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old Swiss masters – old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence of art.
The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water is very clear. The parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages. One day I thought I would stop and see a fish caught. The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which I had not thought of before for twelve years. This one:
The man who put up at Gadsby’s.
When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in Washington, in the winter of ’67, we were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. “This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain’t you?”
Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said:
“I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?”
“That’s just what I was doing,” said the man, joyously, “and it’s the biggest luck in the world that I’ve found you. My name is Lykins. I’m one of the teachers of the high school – San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it – and here I am.”
“Yes,” said Riley, slowly, “as you have remarked… Mr. Lykins… here you are. And have you got it?”
“Well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. I’ve brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you’ll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home.”
“If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation tonight,” said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it – to an unaccustomed ear.
“Oh, tonight, by all means! I haven’t got any time to fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed – I ain’t the talking kind, I’m the doing kind!”
“Yes… you’ve come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?”
“Just an hour ago.”
“When are you intending to leave?”
“For New York tomorrow evening – for San Francisco next morning.”
“Just so…. What are you going to do tomorrow?”
“Do! Why, I’ve got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven’t I?”
“Yes… very true… that is correct. And then what?”
“Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M. – got to get the appointment confirmed – I reckon you’ll grant that?”
“Yes… yes,” said Riley, meditatively, “you are right again. Then you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?”
“That’s it – that’s the way I map it out!”
Riley considered a while, and then said:
“You couldn’t stay… a day… well, say two days longer?”
“Bless your soul, no! It’s not my style. I ain’t a man to go fooling around – I’m a man that does things, I tell you.”
The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said:
“Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby’s, once?… But I see you haven’t.”
He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest:
“I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson’s time. Gadsby’s was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man arrived from Tennessee about nine o’clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of; he drove up before Gadsby’s, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, ‘Never mind,’ and jumped out and told the coachman to wait– said he hadn’t time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry.
“Well, about eleven o’clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up – said he would collect the claim in the morning. This was in January, you understand – January, 1834—the 3d of January – Wednesday.
“Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage, and bought a cheap second-hand one – said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn’t care for style.
“On the 11th of August he sold a pair of the fine horses – said he’d often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving – and there wasn’t so much of his claim but he could lug the money home with a pair easy enough.
“On the 13th of December he sold another horse – said two warn’t necessary to drag that old light vehicle with – in fact, one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition.
“On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy – said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway.
“On the 1st August he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old sulky – said he just wanted to see those green Tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky – didn’t believe they’d ever heard of a sulky in their lives.
“Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored coachman – said he didn’t need a coachman for a sulky – wouldn’t be room enough for two in it anyway – and, besides, it wasn’t every day that Providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that – been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but didn’t like to throw him away.
“Eighteen months later – that is to say, on the 15th of February, 1837—he sold the sulky and bought a saddle – said horseback-riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dog’d if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself.
“On the 9th of April he sold the saddle – said he wasn’t going to risk his life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe – always had despised to ride on a saddle, anyway.
“On the 24th of April he sold his horse – said ’I’m just fifty-seven today, hale and hearty – it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain’t anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that is a man – and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it’s collected. So tomorrow I’ll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-by to Gadsby’s.’
“On the 22d of June he sold his dog – said ’Dern a dog, anyway, where you’re just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills – perfect nuisance – chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords – man can’t get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature – and I’d a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, it’s a mighty sight safer; a dog’s mighty uncertain in a financial way – always noticed it – well, good-by, boys – last call – I’m off for Tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.’”
There was a pause and a silence – except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, impatiently:
“Well?”
Riley said:
“Well, – that was thirty years ago.”
“Very well, very well – what of it?”
“I’m great friends with that old patriarch. He comes every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago – he’s off for Tennessee early tomorrow morning – as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more.”
Another silent pause. The stranger broke it:
“Is that all?”
“That is all.”
“Well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what’s it all for?”
“Oh, nothing in particular.”
“Well, where’s the point of it?”
“Oh, there isn’t any particular point to it. Only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I’d advise you to ‘put up at Gadsby’s’ for a spell, and take it easy. Good-by. God bless you!”
So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp.
He never got that post-office.
To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about nine hours’ waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to “put up at Gadsby’s” and take it easy. It is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it. One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don’t fish for at all – the recent dog and the translated cat.
Chapter XXVII
Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the “Glacier Garden”—and it is the only one in the world. It is on high ground. Four or five years ago, some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. Scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial period; so through their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought and permanently protected against being built upon. The soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey. This track was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock, formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. These huge round boulders still remain in the holes; they and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by the long-continued chafing which they gave each other in those old days.
It took a mighty force to churn these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way. The neighboring country had a very different shape, at that time – the valleys have risen up and become hills, since, and the hills have become valleys. The boulders discovered in the pots had traveled a great distance, for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant Rhone Glacier.
For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue lake Lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains that border it all around – an enticing spectacle, this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun blazing upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it – but finally we concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on a steamboat, and a dash on foot at the Rigi. Very well, we had a delightful trip to Fluelen, on a breezy, sunny day. Everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under an awning; everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonderful scenery; in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection of pleasuring.
The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. Sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake, and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive, but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye. And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes, that one could not imagine a man being able to keep his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths, and the Swiss people go up and down them every day.
Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards – then high aloft, toward the sky, it took a little stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof – and perched on this dizzy mansard one’s eye detected little things like martin boxes, and presently perceived that these were the dwellings of peasants – an airy place for a home, truly. And suppose a peasant should walk in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front yard? – the friends would have a tedious long journey down out of those cloud-heights before they found the remains. And yet those far-away homes looked ever so seductive, they were so remote from the troubled world, they dozed in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams – surely no one who has learned to live up there would ever want to live on a meaner level.
We swept through the prettiest little curving arms of the lake, among these colossal green walls, enjoying new delights, always, as the stately panorama unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise of bursting suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the distant and dominating Jungfrau, or some kindred giant, looming head and shoulders above a tumbled waste of lesser Alps.
Once, while I was hungrily taking in one of these surprises, and doing my best to get all I possibly could of it while it should last, I was interrupted by a young and care-free voice:
“You’re an American, I think – so’m I.”
He was about eighteen, or possibly nineteen; slender and of medium height; open, frank, happy face; a restless but independent eye; a snub nose, which had the air of drawing back with a decent reserve from the silky new-born mustache below it until it should be introduced; a loosely hung jaw, calculated to work easily in the sockets. He wore a low-crowned, narrow-brimmed straw hat, with a broad blue ribbon around it which had a white anchor embroidered on it in front; nobby short-tailed coat, pantaloons, vest, all trim and neat and up with the fashion; red-striped stockings, very low-quarter patent-leather shoes, tied with black ribbon; blue ribbon around his neck, wide-open collar; tiny diamond studs; wrinkleless kids; projecting cuffs, fastened with large oxidized silver sleeve-buttons, bearing the device of a dog’s face – English pug. He carried a slim cane, surmounted with an English pug’s head with red glass eyes. Under his arm he carried a German grammar – Otto’s. His hair was short, straight, and smooth, and presently when he turned his head a moment, I saw that it was nicely parted behind. He took a cigarette out of a dainty box, stuck it into a meerschaum holder which he carried in a morocco case, and reached for my cigar. While he was lighting, I said:
“Yes – I am an American.”
“I knew it – I can always tell them. What ship did you come over in?”
“Holsatia.”
“We came in the Batavia—Cunard, you know. What kind of passage did you have?”
“Tolerably rough.”
“So did we. Captain said he’d hardly ever seen it rougher. Where are you from?”
“New England.”
“So’m I. I’m from New Bloomfield. Anybody with you?”
“Yes – a friend.”
“Our whole family’s along. It’s awful slow, going around alone – don’t you think so?”
“Rather slow.”
“Ever been over here before?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t. My first trip. But we’ve been all around – Paris and everywhere. I’m to enter Harvard next year. Studying German all the time, now. Can’t enter till I know German. I know considerable French – I get along pretty well in Paris, or anywhere where they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at?”
“Schweitzerhof.”
“No! is that so? I never see you in the reception-room. I go to the reception-room a good deal of the time, because there’s so many Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances. I know an American as soon as I see him – and so I speak to him and make his acquaintance. I like to be always making acquaintances – don’t you?”
“Lord, yes!”
“You see it breaks up a trip like this, first rate. I never got bored on a trip like this, if I can make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to. But I think a trip like this would be an awful bore, if a body couldn’t find anybody to get acquainted with and talk to on a trip like this. I’m fond of talking, ain’t you?
“Passionately.”
“Have you felt bored, on this trip?”
“Not all the time, part of it.”
“That’s it! – you see you ought to go around and get acquainted, and talk. That’s my way. That’s the way I always do – I just go ’round, ’round, ’round and talk, talk, talk – I never get bored. You been up the Rigi yet?”
“No.”
“Going?”
“I think so.”
“What hotel you going to stop at?”
“I don’t know. Is there more than one?”
“Three. You stop at the Schreiber – you’ll find it full of Americans.
What ship did you say you came over in?”
“City of Antwerp.”
“German, I guess. You going to Geneva?”
“Yes.”
“What hotel you going to stop at?”
“Hôtel de l’Écu de Génève.”
“Don’t you do it! No Americans there! You stop at one of those big hotels over the bridge – they’re packed full of Americans.”
“But I want to practice my Arabic.”
“Good gracious, do you speak Arabic?”
“Yes – well enough to get along.”
“Why, hang it, you won’t get along in Geneva—they don’t speak Arabic, they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at here?”
“Hotel Pension-Beaurivage.”
“Sho, you ought to stop at the Schweitzerhof. Didn’t you know the
Schweitzerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland? – look at your
Baedeker.”
“Yes, I know – but I had an idea there warn’t any Americans there.”
“No Americans! Why, bless your soul, it’s just alive with them! I’m in the great reception-room most all the time. I make lots of acquaintances there. Not as many as I did at first, because now only the new ones stop in there – the others go right along through. Where are you from?”
“Arkansaw.”
“Is that so? I’m from New England – New Bloomfield’s my town when I’m at home. I’m having a mighty good time today, ain’t you?”
“Divine.”
“That’s what I call it. I like this knocking around, loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking. I know an American, soon as I see him; so I go and speak to him and make his acquaintance. I ain’t ever bored, on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk. I’m awful fond of talking when I can get hold of the right kind of a person, ain’t you?”
“I prefer it to any other dissipation.”
“That’s my notion, too. Now some people like to take a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things, but that ain’t my way; no, sir, if they like it, let ’em do it, I don’t object; but as for me, talking’s what I like. You been up the Rigi?”
“Yes.”
“What hotel did you stop at?”
“Schreiber.”
“That’s the place! – I stopped there too. Full of Americans, wasn’t it? It always is – always is. That’s what they say. Everybody says that. What ship did you come over in?”
“Ville de Paris.”
“French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did… excuse me a minute, there’s some Americans I haven’t seen before.”
And away he went. He went uninjured, too – I had the murderous impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpen-stock, but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me; I found I hadn’t the heart to kill him, he was such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.
Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting, with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were skimming by – a monolith not shaped by man, but by Nature’s free great hand – a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high, devised by Nature ten million years ago against the day when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. The time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer bears Schiller’s name in huge letters upon its face. Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, and painted all over it, in blue letters bigger than those in Schiller’s name, these words:
“Try Sozodont;”
“Buy Sun Stove Polish;”
“Helmbold’s Buchu;”
“Try Benzaline for the Blood.”
He was captured and it turned out that he was an American. Upon his trial the judge said to him:
“You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is privileged to profane and insult Nature, and, through her, Nature’s God, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny in his pocket. But here the case is different. Because you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your sentence light; if you were a native I would deal strenuously with you. Hear and obey: —You will immediately remove every trace of your offensive work from the Schiller monument; you pay a fine of ten thousand francs; you will suffer two years’ imprisonment at hard labor; you will then be horsewhipped, tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever. The severest penalties are omitted in your case – not as a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the misfortune to give you birth.”
