brilliant was not behind the German
world in this respect. I saw the great man frequently, near and far, and
was much impressed with his appearance. _Punch_ had not long before
represented him as Hans Breitmann in a cartoon, deploring that he had not
squeezed more milliards out of the French, and I indeed found in the
original very closely my ideal of Hans, who always occurs to me as a
German gentleman, who drinks, fights, and plunders, not as a mere rowdy,
raised above his natural sphere, but as a rough cavalier. And that the
great-bearded giant Emperor Wilhelm did drink heavily, fight hard, and
mulct France mightily, is matter of history. This was the last year of
the gaming-tables at Homburg. Apropos of these, the roulette-table was
placed in the Homburg Museum, where it may be seen amid many Roman
relics. Two or three years ago, while I was in the room, there came in a
small party of English or Yankee looking or gazing tourists, to whom the
attendant pointed out the roulette-table. "And did the old Romans really
play at roulette, and was _that_ one of their tables?" said the leader of
the visitors. This ready simple faith indicates the Englishman. The
ordinary American is always possessed with the conviction that everything
antique is a forgery. Once when I was examining the old Viking armour in
the Museum of Copenhagen, a Yankee, in whose face a general vulgar
distrust of all earthly things was strongly marked, came up to me and
asked, "Do you believe that all these curiosities air _genooine_?" "I
certainly do," I replied. With an intensely self-satisfied air he
rejoined, "I guess you can't fool _me_ with no such humbug."

There was a great deal of cholera that year in Germany, and I had a very
severe attack of it either in an incipient form or something thereunto
allied: suffice it to say that for twelve hours I almost thought I should
die of pure pain. I took in vain laudanum, cayenne pepper, brandy,
camphor, and kino--nothing would remain. At last, at midnight, when I
was beginning to despair, or just as I felt like being wrecked, I
succeeded in keeping a little weak laudanum and water on my stomach, and
then the point was cleared. After that I took the other remedies, and
was soon well. But it was a crisis of such fearful suffering that it all
remains vividly impressed on my memory. I do not know whether any
sensible book has ever been written on the moral influence of pain, but
it is certain t