monument to the German reconquest of the Rhine, which they had
just passed, "and that is something in our favor."

"It was too far off for us to see how ugly it was," he returned.

"The denkmal at Coblenz was so near that the bronze Emperor almost rode
aboard the boat."

He could not answer such a piece of logic as that. He yielded, and began
to praise the orcharded levels which now replaced the vine-purpled slopes
of the upper river. He said they put him in mind of orchards that he had
known in his boyhood; and they, agreed that the supreme charm of travel,
after all, was not in seeing something new and strange, but in finding
something familiar and dear in the heart of the strangeness.

At Cologne they found this in the tumult of getting ashore with their
baggage and driving from the steamboat landing to the railroad station,
where they were to get their train for Dusseldorf an hour later. The
station swarmed with travellers eating and drinking and smoking; but they
escaped from it for a precious half of their golden hour, and gave the
time to the great cathedral, which was built, a thousand years ago, just
round the corner from the station, and is therefore very handy to it.
Since they saw the cathedral last it had been finished, and now under a
cloudless evening sky, it soared and swept upward like a pale flame.
Within it was a bit over-clean, a bit bare, but without it was one of the
great memories of the race, the record of a faith which wrought miracles
of beauty, at least, if not piety.

The train gave the Marches another, and last, view of it as they slowly
drew out of the city, and began to run through a level country walled
with far-off hills; past fields of buckwheat showing their stems like
coral under their black tops; past peasant houses changing their wonted
shape to taller and narrower forms; past sluggish streams from which the
mist rose and hung over the meadows, under a red sunset, glassy clear
till the manifold factory chimneys of Dusseldorf stained it with their
dun smoke.

This industrial greeting seemed odd from the town where Heinrich Heine
was born; but when they had eaten their supper in the capital little
hotel they found there, and went out for a stroll, they found nothing to
remind them of the factories, and much to make them think of the poet.
The moon, beautiful and perfect as a stage moon, came up over the
shoulder of a church as they passed down a long street which they had all
to