Poznań

“ No, the Germans in Poznan are not oppressed as our people were under their rule. We are altogether too soft-hearted with them.”
The German residents themselves, as was to be expected, took a different view of the situation. When the Polish authorities had decorated my passport with permission to return to Berlin, I took no chances of being held up by the cantankerous dyspeptic at Kreuz and applied for a new visé by the German Volksrat of Posen. It occupied a modest little dwelling-house on the wide, curving avenue no longer recognizable under its former title of “Kaiser Wilhelm Ring.” ”

“ But Cracow was not the only Polish city in which printing establishments were to be found. Other cities had them, too. In the first half of the sixteenth century printing establishments were found in Wilno, Pułtusk, and Poznań. Later, in the course of the second half of the same century, printing presses were established in Lublin, Brześć-Litewski, Kowno, Łosk, Nieświez, Łowicz, Płock, Kalisz, Pińczów, Raków, Zamość, Warsaw, Gdańsk, Chełm, Lwów, Kiev, and other provincial cities and towns. ”

“ The view of Kazan from the other side of the swamp is very fine. It is built on high ground, and its spires and domes show to great advantage from a distance. In the summer season, when tree leaves and green grass are out, the environs of Kazan must be very pleasing to the eye; for even in November, when the country was one great snowy waste, bleak and cheerless, the town looked really handsome. The best houses, as well as public buildings, are built of brick, indeed a wooden house is rather the exception there. ”

“ Copenhagen has decidedly the most distinct personality that I have ever sensed in any city. This interesting capital seems very old and very wise, but not too old and not too wise to sympathize with youth and unwisdom. It is like an ancient lady with silvery hair and strongly-lined face, who yet has warm red blood pulsing through her heart and a merry twinkle in her blue eyes; a very charming dame, Cynthia, and altogether lovable. Once out upon the streets, moving along with the pedestrians, I felt quite at home. ”

“ It is a magnificent city, is it not?—finer, perhaps, than you Americans found Coblenz? Yet everything that gives it magnificence was built by the Germans—the well-paved streets, the big, wide boulevards, the splendid parks, all the government buildings and the best of the private ones, the street-cars, the electric lights, even the higher state of civilization you find among the masses. There is not a Pole in the province of Posen who cannot read and write. Do not make the mistake of thinking all these things are Polish because the Poles have stolen them. ”

“ You go everywhere—to Petrograd, Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Geneva, but never to Warsaw or Cracow. Why not? We need you in Poland more than they need you in Tiflis. Surely Poland has as good a claim as Georgia?” I had praised the hills by which we were surrounded. “We have beautiful mountains in Poland, far more beautiful than these,” he said, waving his arm in the direction of the Alps, shimmering in the mists of a summer morning. “Our mountains are wild and solemn. And very, very beautiful”—his voice grew tender. “Come to Poland and read Heine in the Polish hills.” ”

“ The Kornhauskeller, in the basement of the Kornhaus, is a curious place and worth a visit for a meal. At the Schauzli, on a rise opposite the town, from the terrace of which there is a splendid view and where there is a summer theatre, there is a café-restaurant, and another on the Garten, a hill whence another fine view is obtainable.
Geneva, for its size and importance, is the worst catered for capital in Europe. Outside the hotel restaurants, none of which have attained any special celebrity, there are but few restaurants, and those not of any conspicuous merit. ”

“ A fierce little stream rushes down through the town, on its way turning wheels for flour mills, mechanic’s shops, little factories for making that ingenious Swiss wood work we so often see at home in our shops. We had in Nyon examples of old Swiss architecture, little bridges, nooks and corners, turrets and gables, curious windows and balconies, and those little fanciful additions which would appear to have been the sudden impulsive thought of the builder stuck on at an hour’s notice. All the world knows that Geneva is famed for its watches. ”

“ It was, indeed, at Geneva that Jean Jacques received from his aunt the disciplinary chastisement of which he gives such an exciting account in his ‘Confessions’; and he once returned to the city and received the Holy Communion there in later life. But that is all. Jean Jacques was not educated at Geneva, but in Savoy—at Annecy, at Turin, and at Chambéry; his books were not printed at Geneva, though one of them was publicly burnt there, but in Paris and Amsterdam; it is not to Genevan but to French literature that he belongs. ”

“ Forced water and giant suction pumps wash and drain out the elaborate system of pipes, and spill the death-laden wastage at a distant point into the sea, and with this transformation Copenhagen has become a measurably healthy city. ”

“ It lies so low, almost at the dead level of the sea, and the tides of these Baltic waters are so insignificant—ten to twelve inches only—that for many centuries Copenhagen has been a most unhealthy city, infected by cesspools, tainted by blind drains, and defiled by accumulated poisons, until its death rate was higher than that of any other city in Europe. ”

“ Canton Zürich is, after Berne, the most populous, and beyond comparison the most wealthy of the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland; and the city of Zürich, one of its most beautiful and most flourishing cities. Since the walls of its fortifications have been removed by order of the Grand Council, it has extended and developed itself daily in every direction, like a vigorous tree in the spring. Science, industry, benevolent institutions increase, as if in emulation of each other; and gardens and plantations encircle the increasing city with beauty. ”

“ Just before the road enters Savoy, (as it nears the Salève on the right hand and the Voiron on the left, and beyond the valley through which flows the small river Foron, you see Mont Blanc and its glaciers,) the country loses the tamer, cultivated beauty of the environs of Geneva, and becomes wild and grand. At the summit of the Voiron, in a desert and savage retreat, damp and cold, and usually deep in snow, there was once a monastery. ”

“ Mountain and valley, winter and summer, on the same territory. Descending, the city of Geneva opens gradually; you behold the lake Leman and the Rhône issuing from it. We entered the city, which is fortified, and after crossing the double bridge across the Rhône, we arrived at the Hôtel de l'Eau de Genève at 12 o'clock. The most striking thing in the city of Geneva to the traveller's eye as he enters it, is the view of the arcades on each side of the street, excellent for pedestrians and for protection against sun and rain, but which give a heavy and gloomy appearance to the city. ”

“ Although Copenhagen is by no means a commercial city—scarcely more so than Stockholm—its streets are gay, brilliant and bustling, and have an air of life and joyousness which contrasts strikingly with the gravity of the latter capital. ”

“ OLD GENEVA
Towns which expand too fast and become too prosperous tend to lose their individuality. Geneva has enjoyed that fortune, and has paid that price for it.
Straddling the Rhone, where it issues from the bluest lake in the world, looking out upon green meadows and wooded hills, backed by the dark ridge of the Salève, with the ‘great white mountain’ visible in the distance, it has the advantage of an incomparable site ”

“ Of all the Swiss towns this is considered as the most remarkable for the adoption of French fashions, and there is much more dissipation here than at Geneva, as it is the constant residence of many wealthy families; but, with few exceptions, the houses are neither large nor well built. ”

“ Petersburg, I have already described a Polish restaurant there which was sharply divided by an invisible but impassable line into two camps, both violently Polish, and both so hostile to each other that the girls of one would not speak or eat with the girls of the other, nor even with the men. Warsaw displayed a similar division in almost every street. Very likely it is the price that Poles pay for the strong individuality which has given them so many poets, artists, and musicians. ”

“ I venture you have never felt so much alive. The city stretches out on all sides for miles. Office buildings and stores are going up, new shingle roofs shine brightly under the winter sun, and we can almost smell the paint of the suburban additions. Within fifty years Winnipeg has jumped from a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post of two hundred people to a city of more than two hundred thousand, and it is still growing. The value of the buildings erected last year amounted to more than half that of the new construction in Montreal. ”

“ They were in Germany in August, and one day came to Heidelberg, where they occupied their old apartment of thirteen years before, room forty, in the Schloss Hotel, with its far prospect of wood and hill, the winding Neckar, and the blue, distant valley of the Rhine. Then, presently, they came to Switzerland, to Ouchy-Lausanne, by lovely Lake Geneva, and here Clemens left the family and, with a guide and a boatman, went drifting down the Rhone in a curious, flat-bottomed craft, thinking to find material for one or more articles, possibly for a book. ”

“ Bidding him remain at the entrance, Zabern passed within, and led the two Englishmen to a private apartment wainscotted with oak and decorated with elk-antlers.
"Poland has never been lacking in female beauty," remarked the marshal to Paul, "and I am about to present you to her fairest daughter after the princess. This inn is kept by a friend of mine,—an old companion-in-arms,—Boris Ludovski by name, once a wealthy noble of Warsaw. His zeal in the cause of Polish liberty has reduced him to the position of inn-keeper. Freedom often treats her children hardly. ”

“ Copenhagen (380) , the capital of Denmark, and the only large town in it; lies low, and is built partly on the island of Seeland and partly on the island of Amager, the channel between which forms a commodious harbour; is a thriving place of manufacture and of trade, as its name “Merchants' Haven” implies; has also a university, an arsenal, and numerous public buildings.
Copernicus, Nicolas, founder of modern astronomy, born at Thorn, in Poland, and educated at Cracow and Bologna ”

“ Districts lying contiguous to each other and to the once-Russian Kingdom of Poland will be united to form this free and reconstructed realm, which will have in round figures a purely Polish population of about twenty-one million people. ”

“ To-day Regina is ten times as large as it was twenty years ago. It is a modern city with up-to-date hotels, ten banks, handsome parliament buildings, and twelve railway lines radiating in every direction. It is the largest manufacturing centre between Winnipeg and Calgary, and an important distributing point for farm implements and supplies. ”

“ The third reason why Geneva has acquired so much celebrity among mankind is the great number of learned and distinguished philosophers and scholars that have from time to time lived there. Switzerland is a republic, and the canton of Geneva is Protestant ”

“ Arrived at Berne, we found the Berne station (Swiss capital) the worst of any metropolis in Europe, an Inferno in the hot, and a well in the cold season; a cave of the winds, at all times damp, draughty, and dangerous. It reminded us of York a quarter of a century ago. We returned from Berne to Ouchy through a charming country of vineyards, orchards, and smiling fields. Thirty years ago my wife was here as a girl with a married brother and sister, when it was the smallest of places, and a little inn, which then stood on the borders of the lake, was the best accommodation. ”

“ It is evident, therefore, that the Polish church belonged in the sixteenth century to the class of large property owners. Even in the eastern provinces of Podlasie, Volhynia, Podolia, Red Russia, and Ukraina, where its lands constituted a smaller percentage of the total land area cultivated by peasants than in the western provinces, the ecclesiastical estates were invariably large. Compared with the individual holdings of the Polish nobility and even of the crown, the estates of the bishops, cathedral chapters, and monastic institutions were everywhere baronial. ”

“ It is now become the favourite promenade of the citizens of Geneva, tho' there are still some who cannot get over their old prejudices and never set their foot in it. There is likewise a pleasant walk as far as the town of Carrouge in Savoy, which town has been lately ceded by the King of Sardinia to the republic of Geneva. In Geneva the sentiments of the inhabitants do not seem to be favourable either to the French Revolution, or to Napoleon. ”

“ I next took the steamer and traversed the extent of the lake to Geneva, which is the principal and largest city in Switzerland. Here are generally to be found strangers from all quarters, good hotels, reading rooms, and all the comforts and necessaries of life for those who choose to make it a residence. It is the resort of many wealthy English. The situation upon the lake at the outlet—the beautiful and magnificent scenery—its public promenades—its interesting suburbs and adjacent country—altogether lend many charms to Geneva for a permanent residence. ”