Mark Twain

A Tramp Abroad, Complete

Warsaw 2019

Contents

CHAPTER I. [The Knighted Knave of Bergen]

CHAPTER II. Heidelberg

CHAPTER III. Baker's Bluejay Yarn

CHAPTER IV. Student Life

CHAPTER V. At the Students' Dueling-Ground

CHAPTER VI. [A Sport that Sometimes Kills]

CHAPTER VII. [How Bismark Fought]

CHAPTER VIII. The Great French Duel

CHAPTER IX. [What the Beautiful Maiden Said]

CHAPTER X. [How Wagner Operas Bang Along]

CHAPTER XI. [I Paint a “Turner”]

CHAPTER XII. [What the Wives Saved]

CHAPTER XIII. [My Long Crawl in the Dark]

CHAPTER XIV. [Rafting Down the Neckar]

CHAPTER XV. [Charming Waterside Pictures]

CHAPTER XVI. An Ancient Legend of the Rhine [The Lorelei]

CHAPTER XVII. [Why Germans Wear Spectacles]

CHAPTER XVIII. [The Kindly Courtesy of Germans]

CHAPTER XIX. [The Deadly Jest of Dilsberg]

CHAPTER XX. [My Precious, Priceless Tear-Jug]

CHAPTER XXI. [Insolent Shopkeepers and Gabbling Americans]

CHAPTER XXII. [The Black Forest and Its Treasures]

CHAPTER XXIII. [Nicodemus Dodge and the Skeleton]

CHAPTER XXIV. [I Protect the Empress of Germany]

CHAPTER XXV. [Hunted by the Little Chamois]

CHAPTER XXVI. [The Nest of the Cuckoo-clock]

CHAPTER XXVII. [I Spare an Awful Bore]

CHAPTER XXVIII. [The Jodel and Its Native Wilds]

CHAPTER XXIX. [Looking West for Sunrise]

CHAPTER XXX. [Harris Climbs Mountains for Me]

CHAPTER XXXI. [Alp-scaling by Carriage]

CHAPTER XXXII. [The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]

CHAPTER XXXIII. [We Climb Far—by Buggy]

CHAPTER XXXIV. [The World's Highest Pig Farm]

CHAPTER XXXV. [Swindling the Coroner]

CHAPTER XXXVI. [The Fiendish Fun of Alp-climbing]

CHAPTER XXXVII. [Our Imposing Column Starts Upward]

CHAPTER XXXVIII. [I Conquer the Gorner Grat]

CHAPTER XXXIX. [We Travel by Glacier]

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI. [The Fearful Disaster of 1865]

CHAPTER XLII. [Chillon has a Nice, Roomy Dungeon]

CHAPTER XLIII. [My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed]

CHAPTER XLIX. [I Scale Mont Blanc—by Telescope]

CHAPTER XLV. A Catastrophe Which Cost Eleven Lives

CHAPTER XLVI. [Meeting a Hog on a Precipice]

CHAPTER XLVII. [Queer European Manners]

CHAPTER XLVIII

CHAPTER XLIX. [Hanged with a Golden Rope]

CHAPTER L

APPENDIX

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

APPENDIX D

APPENDIX E

APPENDIX F

CHAPTER I

[The Knighted Knave of Bergen]

One day it occurred to me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle. So I determined to do it. This was in March, 1878.

I looked about me for the right sort of person to accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally hired a Mr. Harris for this service.

It was also my purpose to study art while in Europe. Mr. Harris was in sympathy with me in this. He was as much of an enthusiast in art as I was, and not less anxious to learn to paint. I desired to learn the German language; so did Harris.

Toward the middle of April we sailed in the Holsatia, Captain Brandt, and had a very pleasant trip, indeed.

After a brief rest at Hamburg, we made preparations for a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, but at the last moment we changed the program, for private reasons, and took the express-train.

We made a short halt at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and found it an interesting city. I would have liked to visit the birthplace of Gutenburg, but it could not be done, as no memorandum of the site of the house has been kept. So we spent an hour in the Goethe mansion instead. The city permits this house to belong to private parties, instead of gracing and dignifying herself with the honor of possessing and protecting it.

Frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have the distinction of being the place where the following incident occurred. Charlemagne, while chasing the Saxons (as he said), or being chased by them (as they said), arrived at the bank of the river at dawn, in a fog. The enemy were either before him or behind him; but in any case he wanted to get across, very badly. He would have given anything for a guide, but none was to be had. Presently he saw a deer, followed by her young, approach the water. He watched her, judging that she would seek a ford, and he was right. She waded over, and the army followed. So a great Frankish victory or defeat was gained or avoided; and in order to commemorate the episode, Charlemagne commanded a city to be built there, which he named Frankfort–the ford of the Franks. None of the other cities where this event happened were named for it. This is good evidence that Frankfort was the first place it occurred at.

Frankfort has another distinction–it is the birthplace of the German alphabet; or at least of the German word for alphabet–buchstaben. They say that the first movable types were made on birch sticks–buchstabe–hence the name.

I was taught a lesson in political economy in Frankfort. I had brought from home a box containing a thousand very cheap cigars. By way of experiment, I stepped into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars, and laid down a silver piece worth 48 cents. The man gave me 43 cents change.

In Frankfort everybody wears clean clothes, and I think we noticed that this strange thing was the case in Hamburg, too, and in the villages along the road. Even in the narrowest and poorest and most ancient quarters of Frankfort neat and clean clothes were the rule. The little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body’s lap. And as for the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. One could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust upon them. The street-car conductors and drivers wore pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox, and their manners were as fine as their clothes.

In one of the shops I had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death. It is entitled The Legends Of The Rhine From Basle To Rotterdam, by F. J. Kiefer; translated by L. W. Garnham, B.A.

All tourists mention the Rhine legends–in that sort of way which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar with them all his life, and that the reader cannot possibly be ignorant of them–but no tourist ever tells them. So this little book fed me in a very hungry place; and I, in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two little lunches from the same larder. I shall not mar Garnham’s translation by meddling with its English; for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building English sentences on the German plan–and punctuating them accordingly to no plan at all.

In the chapter devoted to “Legends of Frankfort,” I find the following:

“THE KNAVE OF BERGEN”

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