Unter den Linden

“ Simlins. "This is a piece of Pattaquasset, sir, that we all of us rather cord'ally like. You haven't seen it before?"
"Yes, I don't wonder you like it," said Mr. Linden. "The sea-shore is no novelty to me, sir—such a shore party is."
"I hope you'll enjoy it, as the rest of us do. We all do as we like, Mr. Linden—I hope you'll use the grounds as your own. We have the flag flying, sir, and it ratifies liberty to all who amuse themselves under it."
Mr. Linden looked up at the stars and stripes, with an acknowledging smile for the benefits thereby conferred.
"Faith! Faith Derrick!" ”

“ Out again under the rustling trees of the Linden one strolls on in increasing delight. In the growing zest of the evening the prosperous crowds toss pfennigs to the begging old “Linden Angels” and patronize the flower-venders and newsboys. Of the Linden’s fivefold boulevard, the outer streets are rumbling with heavy wagons and cabs, the drive with carriages, the bridle-path is lively with belated riders and the broad middle promenade is overflowing with pedestrians. ”

“ Won't you be helped to what you like, Mr. Linden? I hope you have enjoyed our shore party this afternoon."
"Thank you"—said Mr. Linden, feeling perhaps that it was not their party he had enjoyed,—"there has been a combination of pleasant things. As far as I could judge the bathers enjoyed their particular expedition."
"O yes, it was delightful—invigorating. Mr. Simlins, I think Mr. Linden will like a piece of that cherry-pie with his clams. Do you take cheese, Mr. Linden? Is your coffee agreeable? There is the cold tongue by you, Jerushy.—I hope you like Pattaquasset." ”

“ CARL LINNÉ, KING OF THE FLOWERS
Years ago there grew on the Jonsboda farm in Smaland, Sweden, a linden tree that was known far and wide for its great age and size. So beautiful and majestic was the tree, and so wide the reach of its spreading branches, that all the countryside called it sacred. Misfortune was sure to come if any one did it injury. So thought the people. It was not strange, then, that the farmer’s boys, when they grew to be learned men and chose a name, should call themselves after the linden. The peasant folk had no family names in those days. ”

“ Linden's leaving Pattaquasset. He had paid his many farewell visits before the last week came, and before that, too, had given up his weekday scholars,—those last days were all given to Faith. Given to her in every possible way—out of doors and within; in that fair summer weather the open air was the best of all places for talking, and the least liable to intrusion. It was a great relief to get away from village sights and sounds to the still woods, or the fresh shore,—it was a great help towards cheerfulness. ”

“ You shall judge for yourself when I have narrated to you a few chapters from the experience of a young Bavarian botanist,—Karl Linden—while engaged in a plant-hunting expedition to the Alps of India—the stupendous mountains of the Himalaya.
Chapter Two. Karl Linden.
Karl Linden was a native of Upper Bavaria, near the Tyrolese frontier. Not high-born, for his father was a gardener; but, what is of more importance in modern days, well brought up and well educated. A gardener’s son may still be a gentleman; and so may a gardener himself, for that matter, or he may not. ”

“ Linden said softly, "Faith!" She looked up with flushed face, and all of tears in her eyes but the tears; and her lip had its very unbent line. She looked first at him and then at the ring again. Anything more humble or more grave than her look cannot be imagined. His face was grave too, with a sort of moved gravity, that touched both the present and the past, but he did not mean hers should be. ”

“ Linden adjusted the carnations; glancing from them to her, trying them in different positions, playing over his dainty task as if he liked it. The flowers in place, his full smiling look met hers, and she was carried off to the glass "to see his wife." Hardly seen, after all, but by himself.
"She looks ready for dinner," said Faith.
"Your eyes are only to look at," said Mr. Linden with a laughing endorsement of his thoughts, and putting her back in the dormeuse. ”

“ You just move yourself a bit quicker or leave it alone altogether.'
Linden did not answer: he went on with his work, his hand trembling to such an extent that he was scarcely able to hold the pumice stone.
Hunter shouted so loud that his voice filled all the house. Everyone heard and was afraid. Who would be the next, they thought.
Finding that Linden made no further answer, Misery again began walking about the house. ”

“ Linden the trial was not new, and to sorrow of various kinds he was wonted; but it was new to him to see her tried, and to that he found it hard to accustom himself. Yet he carried out his words,—Faith could feel a sort of atmosphere of bright strength about her all the time. How tenderly she was watched and watched over she could partly see, but pain or anxiety Mr. Linden kept to himself. He set himself to work to make her enjoy every minute. ”

“ Lindau is a picturesque old place, as it stands rising, as it were, out of the very waters of the Lake of Constance, and the great mountain of the Sentis, with its peak of six thousand feet high, is a fine object in the distance; while the gorge of the Upper Rhine offers many a grand effect of Alpine scenery, not the less striking when looked at with a setting sun, which made the foreground more massive and the hill tops golden ”

“ Linden with a little spring and leave him to follow with Reuben. And Faith had opened the wagon door.
"Faith! you dear child!" said Miss Linden, "what have you been doing with yourself—or what has anybody done with you, to stow you away here like a forgotten parcel?" She had entered the wagon no further than to rest one knee there holding both Faith's hands and looking at her with full, bright, loving eyes. "How came Endecott to leave you here, alone?"
"Two people must be alone—if they are not together," said Mr. Linden. ”

“ But Mr. Linden, may I interfere with your heaven for a moment, and persuade these stars to shine, for that length of time, upon less favoured regions? With another revolution of the earth they will rise upon you again."
"I shall not persuade the stars for you," said Mr. Linden.
"I will endeavour so far," said the doctor turning to Faith. "I had the honour to offer to shew Miss Derrick the peculiar effect of Chinese lanterns in Pattaquasset—may I hope that she will allow me to fulfil my promise?" ”

“ Now, it would be idle to say that these rapids were as dangerous as the famous whirlpool below Niagara Falls; for it would not only be untrue, but it would shut me out from taking Fred Linden safely through them: for I am bound to do that, since he is too good a fellow to sacrifice at this early stage of my story, and you would not forgive me for doing so.
But all the same the danger was great, and was enough to cause the bravest man to shrink from attempting the passage. ”

“ Linden; pushing back their caps—or pulling them down with a quick brush across the eyes;—the hand with which Johnny Fax stroked back from Mr. Linden's forehead any stray lock of hair which the wind displaced, or laid on his shoulder when there was nothing else to do;—made altogether a picture the like of which Mr. Simlins had not seen before—nor even Faith. The sun might leave the clearing and betake itself to the tree-tops, and thence to the clouds,—there was light there which came from a higher source. ”

“ Mr. Linden—whose smile and word of thanks had accompanied Faith's,—"Phil has singularly quick eyes. They have done me good service before."
As they turned again, Farmer Davids stood at their horses' heads. They were just at the farmer's door, and he so entreated them to come 'in and rest,' that there was no refusing his hospitality. It was large, and various—Pumpkin pies and cider, and much pouring forth of gratitude and admiration for Mr. Linden's success with Phil.
"What have you done to that fellow?" his father remarked admiringly to Mr. Linden. "You never see such an alteration in a boy. ”

“ From Constance to Lindau we had an enchanting sail over an emerald sea, with many a pretty village gleaming along its shore, “like a white swan on her reedy nest;” and then green hills, that soon turned into denser clouds, as it were, and directly, almost in a flash, the snow-covered Alps!
Railway from Lindau here; and such a succession of pictures! Long, green valleys, dotted with picturesque villages; chains of wooded knolls; ranges of dark, pine-covered mountains, overtopped in places with a vast jumble of cones; snow-covered Alps again, that shone in the sunlight like molten silver! ”

“ There is the grand solitude of Heddon's Mouth and the raven-haunted cliffs to Lynton; there is Lynton itself, drowned in the green woods that surge up the steep hillside; there is the West Lyn Gorge, shadeless and sultry even on a spring day, and the East Lyn Valley, where ferns and lilies of the valley grow, and every green thing that loves moisture and shade; and the Watersmeet, where there is a perpetual rushing of waters which drowns the song of the birds; there is Porlock, between the moors and the marshes, and the drowned forest of Porlock Bay ”

“ The fishermen came from Quapaw, and the labourers from the farms all over the country; those who did not directly know Mr. Linden, knew of him; and knew such things of him that they would not have missed this opportunity of hearing him speak, for a week's wages. The fathers and mothers of the boys he had taught, they knew him; and they came in mass, with all their uncles, aunts and cousins to the remotest degree, provided they were not geographically too remote. The upper society of Pattaquasset lost not a man nor a woman ”

“ Linden's attention; men whose boys were at the school; and who now in various states of gratification, but all gratified, came one after another to grasp his hand and thank him for the good he had done and was doing them.
"You're the first man, sir," said one, a broad-shouldered, tall, strong man, with a stern reserved face,—"you're the first man that has been able to make that boy of mine—Phil—attend to anything, or go to school regular. He talks hard sometimes,—but you do what you like with him, Mr. Linden! I give you my leave. He's smart, and he aint a bad boy, at heart ”

“ Gretchen.
Time flies swiftly when we are sightseeing; and it was late in the autumn of 18— when I reached Lindau. Lake Constance lay before me, a pale, green sheet of water, hemmed in on the south by bold mountain ranges, filling the interim between the Rhine valley and the long undulating ridges of the Canton Thurgau. These heights, cleft at intervals by green smiling valleys and deep ravines, are only the front of table-land stretching away like an inclined plane, and dotted with scattered houses and cloistering villages. ”

“ Mount Lindsay is the grandest of all, lifting crags and ramparts more than 5,000 feet from the downs below, as rugged in appearance as any escarpment of the Blue Mountains, and of a vaster height and bulk. The rich pasture-lands about his feet are buried in haze, and occasional lagoons sparkle like flakes of silver or eyes of a well-contented earth-spirit looking up to the sky. ”

“ The fleeing animals must have known that their headlong speed could not be kept up among the trees and undergrowth; so, when those at the head of the drove were close to the edge of the wood they swerved to the left,291 and the others followed with the same furious swiftness with which they had sped across the open.
Fred Linden at this time was not a third of the way across the prairie, and he stopped and viewed the sight. He could distinguish the animals much better than when they were tearing straight away from him. ”

“ The roads at the crossing were wide and smooth, with cool woods on either side, but beyond them to the left rose the high, jagged, yellow-and-black mass of the mountains, bare on their upper reaches, and wooded in the shelter of the valleys, a splintered peak or two farthest inland showing snowcapped even in August. They dominated the narrow strip of fertile, hilly land between them and the sea, abrupt, savage, Central European. One of the roads led up through a cloven valley and was engulfed in it, the other ran more levelly along the sea coast. John stopped while we stared. ”

“ Linden has, of late, been much too particular in his manner towards you: your foolish and undue familiarity with every one has perhaps given him encouragement. After the gross imposition which Lord Borodaile exposed to us last night, I cannot but consider the young man as a mere adventurer, and must not only insist on your putting a total termination to civilities which we must henceforth consider presumption, but I myself shall consider it incumbent upon me greatly to limit the advances he has thought proper to make towards my acquaintance. ”

“ Linden, with a good-humoured raising of his brows at the doctor.
"But the man ran!"
"So did I—he could hardly think I was much hurt."
"I don't want to have such a fellow abroad in Pattaquasset," said the doctor. "But suppose we go back to the pleasant things. You must start the subject, Linden. Rousseau says a man can best describe the sweets of liberty from the inside of a prison—so, I suppose, you being shot at and laid on your back, can have no lack of theme."
Mr. Linden smiled—the smile of a most unfettered spirit. ”