h
are even more bloodthirsty at sight of a travelere than the Swiss,
and twice as obsequious. But to return to our American. He had all the
railway timetables that he could procure; and he was busily studying
them, with the design of "getting on." I heard him say to his
companions, as he ransacked his pockets, that he was a mass of
hotel-bills and timetables. He confided to me afterward, that his wife
and her friend had got it into their heads that they must go both to
Vienna and Berlin. Was Berlin much out of the way in going from Vienna
to Paris? He said they told him it was n't. At any rate, he must
get round at such a date: he had no time to spare. Then, besides the
slowness of getting on, there were the trunks. He lost a trunk in
Switzerland, and consumed a whole day in looking it up. While the
steamboat lay at the wharf at Rorschach, two stout porters came
on board, and shouldered his baggage to take it ashore. To his
remonstrances in English they paid no heed; and it was some time before
they could be made to understand that the trunks were to go on to
Lindau. "There," said he, "I should have lost my trunks. Nobody
understands what I tell them: I can't get any information." Especially
was he unable to get any information as to how to "get on." I confess
that the restless American almost put me into a fidget, and revived
the American desire to "get on," to take the fast trains, make all the
connections,--in short, in the handsome language of the great West,
to "put her through." When I last saw our traveler, he was getting his
luggage through the custom-house, still undecided whether to push on
that night at eleven o'clock. But I forgot all about him and his hurry
when, shortly after, we sat at the table-d'hote at the hotel, and the
sedate Germans lit their cigars, some of them before they had finished
eating, and sat smoking as if there were plenty of leisure for
everything in this world.

A CITY OF COLOR

After a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, is called
an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from our view the
Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant country,
past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with vines, gay
with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds of flowers, past
switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at the switches and
raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in a military salute,
as we go by, we com