ed at each
other. "Good gracious! what unbounded hospitality!" whispered one. "At
his _aunt's_!" exclaimed a second, somewhat puzzled by the anachronism.
"Don't interrupt," said a third interested listener; "he means
_Mayence_;" and he proceeded with the narrative. They accomplished their
pilgrimage in safety; but, upon their return, were "fetched up py ter
parparians," as the guide expressed it, which means, in English, that
they were murdered, here at Cologne. If you doubt the story, behold the
skulls! We turned suddenly upon the guide.

"Do _you_ believe this?"

"I mus; sinz I tells it to you," was his enigmatical reply, dropping his
eyes.

The scenery along the Rhine from Cologne, for twenty miles, is
uninteresting; just now, too, the weather was uncomfortably hot, and we
were glad to leave the steamer for a few hours at Bonn. Upon the balcony
of a hotel, looking out upon the river, we found a score of young men in
bright-colored caps--students from the university here. When dinner was
announced, they crowded in and filled the table, at which the ladies of
our party were the only ones present. Such a noisy, loud-talking set as
they were! When each one had dined, he coolly leaned back in his chair,
and lighted his pipe! Before we had finished our almonds and raisins the
room was quite beclouded. Then they adjourned with pipe and wine-glass
to the balcony again, where we left them when we went out to see the
town.

The university was formerly a palace, the guide-book had told us; but
all our childish conceptions of palaces had been rudely destroyed before
now, so that we were not surprised to find it without any especial
beauty of architecture--only a pile of brown stone, three quarters of a
mile long. I think we had left all the students drinking wine upon the
balcony, for we saw none here,--though we went through the library,
museum, and various halls,--except one party outside, who stared
unblushingly at the girls remaining in the carriage.

Somewhere in the town we found a lovely old minster, through the aisles
of which we wandered for a while, happy in having no guide and knowing
nothing whatever about it. Outside, in a little park, was a statue of
Beethoven, and in a quiet street near the water the musical girls of our
party found the house where he was born. In the cool of the day we took
another steamer, and went on towards the beckoning hills, at nightfall
reaching Rolandseck. There was no town in sight