once possessed himself of
much more than his share of the cylinder, extorting a cry of indignation
from his wife, who now saw herself reduced from a fastidious choice of
luxuries to a mere vulgar strife for the necessaries of life,--a thing
any woman abhors.

"Well, well," said the colonel, "keep your old hot-water bottle. If
there was any other way of warming my feet, I wouldn't touch it. It
makes me sick to use it; I feel as if the doctor was going to order me
some boneset tea. Give _me_ a good red-hot patent car-heater, that
smells enough of burning iron to make your head ache in a minute, and
sets your car on fire as soon as it rolls over the embankment. That's
what _I_ call comfort. A hot-water bottle shoved under your feet--I
should suppose I _was_ a woman, and a feeble one at that. I'll tell you
what _I_ think about this Black Forest business, Bessie: I think it's
part of a system of deception that runs through the whole German
character. I have heard the Germans praised for their sincerity and
honesty, but I tell you they have got to work hard to convince me of it,
from this out. I am on my guard. I am not going to be taken in any
more."

It became the colonel's pleasure to develop and exemplify this idea at
all points of their progress through Germany. They were going to Italy,
and as Mrs. Kenton had had enough of the sea in coming to Europe, they
were going to Italy by the only all-rail route then existing,--from
Paris to Vienna, and so down through the Simmering to Trieste and
Venice. Wherever they stopped, whatever they did before reaching Vienna,
Colonel Kenton chose to preserve his guarded attitude. "Ah, they pretend
this is Stuttgart, do they?" he said on arriving at the Suabian capital.
"A likely story! They pretended that was the Black Forest, you know,
Bessie." At Munich, "And this is Munich!" he sneered, whenever the
conversation flagged during their sojourn. "It's outrageous, the way
they let these swindling little towns palm themselves off upon the
traveller for cities he's heard of. This place will be calling itself
Berlin, next." When his wife, guide-book in hand, was struggling to heat
her admiration at some cold history of Kaulbach, and in her failure
clinging fondly to the fact that Kaulbach had painted it, "Kaulbach!"
the colonel would exclaim, and half close his eyes and slowly nod his
head and smile. "What guide-book is that you've got, Bessie?" looking
curiously at the volume he knew so w