Louise B. Robinson

“ I thought of all the loved friends we were sailing away from, in the body but not in spirit, and asked our dear ‘Father in Heaven’ to take care of us all. I was tired, so dined early, settled things a little in our state-room, and retired. I went immediately to sleep, without a care, like a weary, confiding child on its mother’s breast, and did not once awaken until nine the next morning—Sunday. My rest was perfect, thus ‘rocked in the cradle of the deep,’ while the waves sung to me their sweet lullaby. ”

“ After a couple are married, they go to drive about the city; the wealthier class in their own carriages, the less wealthy in hired ones, and the poor on foot, but all arrayed in the wedding dress, with veil and the orange flowers. We met eight brides in one afternoon’s drive, and we have seen many others in the different museums and galleries. The French are indeed a pleasure-loving people. Every green spot, and they are legion, here is bright with life. Lovely children are out in great numbers with their dark-eyed, handsome bonnes. ”

“ The wonderful beauty of the castle itself, the romantic situation, and the exquisite landscape views from its rich stone terrace,{213} will be choice pictures in our memories for many a day.
There are but few attractive shops in Heidelberg; plenty of bologna sausages and pretzels; portraits and photographs of the two dead emperors everywhere, and many of the new Emperor William. ‘The king is dead. Long live the king.’ The city seems full of soldiers, all with black crape on their arms, and the citizens—men, women, and children—wear it also. Everything shows to us that we are indeed in Germany. ”

“ In the museum are many works of all the noted old masters of the Dutch and Flemish school—for Antwerp gave birth to a long list of them—and here their works are treasured. Here is the noted ‘Le Christ à la Paille’—Christ dead, lying on a stone strewed with straw; and here too is Vandyk’s ‘Saviour on the Cross,’ which tells the whole sublime story. Of the more modern pictures, Lady Godiva is worthy of mention. The flesh tints are exquisite. She is represented as just letting drop a curtain, which is of a bright, warm color, and her attitude is so graceful that one looks at her again and again. ”

“ Saturday, June 30th.—The sun shone for us brightly again this morning, and we took an early drive through the always attractive streets and parks of Paris. Early as it was, crowds of people were to be seen, driving, walking, and sitting in the ‘sidewalk cafés,’ and under the trees, chatting, laughing, and everybody seeming to have plenty of leisure time. How is it that no one appears to be in a hurry here? One reason that the ladies have so much more time is because their housekeeping cares are so much less than those of Americans. ”

“ I could not have believed it possible that intelligent men and women could have enjoyed such a conglomeration, but they seemed to. At midnight, after walking some distance to find our cabs, we were driven to Rue Clement Marot, through the Arch, and this grand monument looked even more grand in the full blaze of the electric lights. To-morrow we regretfully leave this beautiful city and our pleasant friends, who have done so much to make our stay here a happy one. Whatever is rich, Paris is richer. Whatever is grand, Paris is grander! Whatever is beautiful, Paris is more so. ”

“ The burning of the Tuileries in 1871 was an exhibition of their insanity in times of excitement.
Here is my Paris edition of the New York Herald. I bless James Gordon Bennett every time I take up this little paper, so grateful am I to him for it. After struggling with French conversation, French books, French signs, French everything, all the day, it is a delight to me to see my own language in print, to see American news, and often to see the name of some one I know or know of. Oh, we do not realize how dear America is to us until we are far from her shores. ”

“ We saw many names, on monuments, familiar to us from history; but as a whole, everything is too mixed up for it to be considered a beautiful cemetery. We saw a young girl bending over a grave in tears, and our own fell for her. She left a wreath on the, to her, precious earth, composed of white immortelles, with words made of the yellow flowers embedded in the white, which read, as nearly as we could translate, ‘To the loved man who was to have been my husband.’ That told the sad story. We thought Victor Hugo rested here, but one of our trio said no; at the Pantheon, he felt sure. ”

“ At any rate, nothing could have charmed me more than the appearance of this town—the name of which means ‘Meadow bath’—in the lovely drive we have just had through its pretty streets, bordered with fine trees and magnificent residences. Hotels are crowded, as we are here in the season for fashionable recreation and rest, and perhaps I may add, fashionable dissipation. People bathe in and drink the unsavory waters, and think they are made as good as new. ”

“ Where the man came from we did not see, nor where he went we cared not, for we did not choose to be served up on ice that day. We crossed safely and recrossed at a different place, where the ice scenery varied as much as mountain scenery does from various outlooks, and we felt that never in our lives before had we seen anything so magnificent. As I was ascending the jagged points of the cliff to step on land, something fluttered like a feather before my eyes; but I soon saw that it was a butterfly; my guide caught it for me, and I had, as my trophy, a pure-white butterfly. ”

“ As we neared the valley it ceased raining, the clouds broke, and for a little while the sun shone brightly and sank slowly in the west just as we entered our hotel yard, the young people exclaiming to those who came out to greet us, ‘We have had a charming time,’ but I, with every article of clothing thoroughly soaked, and my body feeling as if I had been under a thrashing machine, parted with mule society most willingly. ”

“ Cologne Cathedral! Dear, of this great piece of Gothic architecture, with its majestic arches, columns, pillars, windows, and all else that helps make up its wonderful beauty, I have no words to tell you. It is perfect: nothing has equalled it. We wandered about, then seated ourselves, with never before in our lives so beautiful a perspective before us, and I was so overpowered with it all that I am not sure but I should still be sitting there if F. had not said, ‘Come, we must see the chapels.’{238} There are seven of them, all filled with costly pictures and relics. ”

“ These faces are all exquisite, sadly so, and yet one seems to see in them an expression of trustfulness, a spiritual hope, as if they saw something beyond the unspeakable sadness of the hour.{289} The figure of our Saviour is touchingly real. The drooping of the precious head—the muscles relaxed—it is all Death; and never, before or since has the great, sad tragedy been so sublimely told. The colors are wonderful—rich, mellow, and harmonious; and we leave the cathedral with tears in our eyes, thinking only of Christ crucified, and for us. ”

“ Excursion steamers, barges, and yachts, freighted with humanity, are busily plying up and down, and the bridges open gracefully to let us pass. The river itself, with the Victoria Embankment on the one side and the Albert Embankment on the other, the fine buildings, the parks, and the noble trees, all seen through the rich atmosphere of this perfect June day, make a picturesque and enjoyable impression, not soon to be forgotten. ”

“ We feel sorry for mistaken royalty, and more sorry for the innocent, but let us go out into the beautiful gardens of Versailles, and see there the multitude enjoying its delights, instead of a few kings and queens, and be thankful. The palace and its gems are educators for them, and the gardens a place of rest, and may they ever thus remain. It was at Versailles that ‘good Queen Vic’ was royally entertained by Louis Napoleon, and it was also here that Emperor William was, later, crowned King of Prussia. ”

“ We took a drive through the new portion of the city, where are many elegant residences. We went into two churches; saw a fine statue of Erasmus the scholar, also one of Spinoza. We then went into many of the old, crooked, narrow streets of the older part of the city, called Binnenstad, and here everything looked very ‘Dutch’ like; and it is the queer aspect of these foreign cities that I particularly enjoy,—the markets on market-day especially. The peasants at their stalls, in the funny gowns and funnier head-dresses, are perfectly fascinating. ”

“ With the French people’s love for the beautiful, with their especial love for Paris, with their seeming contentment of position, with their hospitality and their never-failing politeness as we now see them, it does not seem possible that in times of rebellion and riot they so lose themselves as to burn and destroy that they have so dearly loved, and that they become disloyal and unreasonable toward each other. ”

“ We sailed back to Geneva at the hour of sunset. All my life I had heard much of the sudden, striking color changes that sunset produces on the summits of the Alps—and we have seen them in all their great beauty. At one instant, the terraces of mountain tops looked as if clothed in gold, and next as if painted crimson,—and as the sun sunk lower they were left huge dark piles, casting their shadows over us. On{137} landing, we took a walk, and inspected the much-heard-of monument of the Duke of Brunswick, for the erection of which he left plans and money. ”

“ The homes of the working people, just here, look as if intended to illustrate a revised edition of ‘the happy family.’ Human beings, both sexes, of several generations, judging from the very old looking women and the few old men, and the little babies we see, with horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and hens, all live under one outside upper roof, having perhaps the choice of apartments inside. The door-yards look neat, but without exception, every house has somewhere near the never-to-be-missed fertilizer pile, often higher than the house, and generally the bigger the house the bigger the pile. ”

“ August 3d, 1888.—Leaving Cologne, and carrying much cologne with us, we started at nine o’clock A.M. for Utrecht, turning our faces toward the cathedral’s spire as long as we could catch a glimpse of it, and soon we are out of Germany and in Holland. For all the Germans drink so much beer, we have never seen in the country one intoxicated person, and who could go far in our own land and say that? ’Tis true, and pity ’tis ’tis true,’ that the poor whiskey deluded Americans drink is many times more deadly and destructive than beer. ”