THE RHINE STEAMER.

11

story and of song, the sound of the German tongue on every side, the music, the exquisite exhilaration arising when expectation is about to grasp its object, all combined to produce a state of feeling which is too delicate and complex to admit of description, but which when once experienced can never be forgotten, and the moments are afterwards recalled as moments in which the very sense of life was luxury.

Imagination indeed made the sky brighter, the verdure fresher, the spot more romantic, the music sweeter, removed commonness from common men and common things; and, perhaps, from ordinary materials made a beautiful picture for herself by scattering profusely over every thing colors of her own. But do we not always half create the beauty which seems to surround us, and breathe from our own souls the melody which seems to enchant our ear?

The steamer, through some accident, was delayed several hours beyond the appointed time. Passengers were collected in the steamboat office, some seated on chairs, some on trunks, while others were pacing along the wharf chattering and smoking, and endeavoring to wear away the weary time. To me, however, as all was novelty, so nothing was wearisome. At length, over the land in front of us, a little wreath of smoke was seen in the distance; but so numerous are the turns of the river, that it was a considerable time before the pipe came into view, and still a good while ere the low, long, narrow and dark thing came puffing up to the wharf as if tired out with tugging against the current. And so we got aboard amid a promiscuous company, chiefly Hollanders and Germans. The bow of the boat was appropriated to a crowd

12

THE PEASANTRY.

of the peasantry who had probably descended the Rhine on rafts, and were now returning home to the Duchy of Nassau, where most of the rafts are launched. They were dressed in blouses, with wooden shoes on the feet, and little caps on the head, from under which straggled long locks, generally light colored, and many of a perfect flaxen hue. Each man, too, had his pipe. The pipe was evidently a matter of pride and ornament, as well as comfort, and appeared in every variety of fantastic form. Some were sitting some reclining, some collected in groups talking. There was little of frolicksomeness among them. They seemed rather to be enjoying the repose of the return voyage, and had a meditative air while sending forth clouds of smoke from the constantly employed pipe. I observed, too, now, as well as afterwards, that the German peasantry, both men and women, have a care-worn, anxious and depressed expression. They have strongly marked and intelligent faces, they are very civil and obliging in their manners; but they appear like beings who seldom know pleasure, whose lives are an unintermitted toil which yields them little,

-a hard struggle for a bare subsistence-a life of stern experience without any hope of brighter days-an inexorable necessity. Can their thoughts find relief except in theories of socialism, dreams of revolution, or possibilities of emigration ?

The stern of the boat was occupied by passengers of a widely different description. Here were well-dressed people of both sexes and all ages, full of sociability and hilarity. Many of them were ascending the Rhine on pleasure excursions to the watering-places and to Switzerland. Here, too, smoking was universal among the men; generally cigars, not fine

SMOKING — EMMERICH.

13

Havanas, but made of Dutch tobacco, and to me not very agreeable. I had some Havanas with me, and so I lighted. one to make an atmosphere for myself: as the trappers on the prairies fight fire with fire, so I fought tobacco with tobacco. There were also bottles of bright Rhenish wine plentifully scattered about.

When I went below, I found the saloon filled with men and women taking coffee. Here also smoking was going on. There was no compunction whatever in smoking in the presence of the fair sex; and the fair sex seemed to experience no inconvenience from it. It was an established custom which the lords of creation had made. Whatever rebellion there may have been at its first institution, this rebellion had died away in past generations, and tobacco-smoke was now universally accepted as an essential element of the social atmosphere.

Steamboats on the Rhine are not "floating palaces" like those on the Hudson, and have no accommodations for sleeping. Hence at night the passengers go ashore at some of the towns. This is all the better, for there are some parts of the Rhine where it would be almost a sin to go to sleep; and to a stranger all the towns have something worth seeing. Our stopping-place for the night was Emmerich, the first Prussian town. We ought to have reached here at sunset, but owing to the delay above mentioned it was eleven o'clock at night before we were moored at the wharf. We however had lost nothing as to scenery. At Emmerich the Customhouse officers boarded us. How the others fared I did not pause to see, but for myself I began at once to unlock my

14 LATE TO BED, AND EARLY TO RISE.

trunks, when one of the officers, just glancing at the contents of a trunk, allowed me to proceed no farther, saying it was sufficient, expressing to another officer at the same time, in an under tone, his satisfaction at my readiness.

It was midnight ere our weary limbs were stretched out for repose. Scarcely had we sunk into that disturbed sleep which follows a day of excitement, when some one thundered at our door; it was four o'clock, and the steamer would be off at five. Oh, the agony of that getting up! The cathedrals of Cologne and Strasburg, the Drachenfels, Ehrenbreitstein—the glorious Rhine-the glorious Alps-all sunk into insignificance in the intense longing to lie still and sleep. With eyes half open, muttering dissatisfaction, quarrelling with fate, we dragged our reluctant steps on board. But when the steamer began again to stem the current of the Rhine, and the fresh morning air to play upon our faces, the mists of night, too, began to vanish from our spirits, and the sense of pleasurable existence to revive. Then as we wound our way through the rich verdant champagne, where villas and towns were rushing into view, attention grew fully awake, the charm of novelty again exerted its power, and we felt that indescribable emotion which every imaginative traveller must experience when he exclaims to himself for the first time, I am ascending the Rhine!

It was not long before the passengers were seen arranging themselves in groups, or sitting solitarily by little tables on the deck, where coffee and bread and butter, and, in some instances, other viands, were served according to each one's fancy. Coffee and bread and butter was the common break

COFFEE AND GOOD HUMOR.

15

fast. With the coffee, conversation revived. As each one took his cup of the delightful beverage, and stirred it with the spoon and sipped, the eye brightened, an air of comfort and satisfaction spread over the countenance, over the whole man; and the nervousness of slumber untimely broken, and the fretfulness of the hurry of getting on board which had been universal, and which the morning air and the Rhine had not dissipated in many who were not very sensitive to the one, and found no novelty in the other, now yielded to this nectar. The change was instantaneous and marvellous, and the currents of Low Dutch and German were pleasantly running together, until the conversation became like the babbling of brooks running over smooth stones and through green meadows. Those who did not fancy the morning air took to the saloon below; and thus above and below the same revivification was in progress.

After the coffee and bread and butter had been disposed of, smoking recommenced. Each one did his best. Was it the smoke of the steamer's pipe, or the smoke of our pipes and cigars that streamed behind through the air? I again in pure self-defence lighted my Havana; and getting into conversation with a group of Hollanders and Germans where Low Dutch and High Dutch seemed to be mutually intelligible, and which I intermingled in a strange jargon, I passed around my Havanas to enlarge the circumference of a more fragrant atmosphere. I was charmed with the universal sociability, and talked away, hit or miss. At first I was taken for an Englishman; but I found, both then and ever afterwards, that I gained a hundred per cent. in the good will and kind