A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

Away down on the level under the black mass of the Castle,

the town lay, stretched along the river, its intricate

cobweb of streets jeweled with twinkling lights;

there were rows of lights on the bridges; these flung

lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows

of the arches; and away at the extremity of all this

fairy spectacle blinked and glowed a massed multitude

of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of ground;

it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread

out there. I did not know before, that a half-mile

of sextuple railway-tracks could be made such an adornment.

One thinks Heidelberg by day–with its surroundings–

is the last possibility of the beautiful; but when he

sees Heidelberg by night, a fallen Milky Way, with that

glittering railway constellation pinned to the border,

he requires time to consider upon the verdict.

One never tires of poking about in the dense woods that

clothe all these lofty Neckar hills to their beguiling

and impressive charm in any country; but German legends

and fairy tales have given these an added charm.

They have peopled all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs,

and all sorts of mysterious and uncanny creatures.

At the time I am writing of, I had been reading so much

of this literature that sometimes I was not sure but I

was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies

as realities.

One afternoon I got lost in the woods about a mile from

the hotel, and presently fell into a train of dreamy thought

about animals which talk, and kobolds, and enchanted folk,

and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff; and so,

by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining I

glimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the

columned aisles of the forest. It was a place which was

peculiarly meet for the occasion. It was a pine wood,

with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one’s

footfall made no more sound than if he were treading

on wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight

and smooth as pillars, and stood close together;

they were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five

feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick with

boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through.

The world was bright with sunshine outside, but a deep

and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep

silence so profound that I seemed to hear my own breathings.

When I had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining,

and getting my spirit in tune with the place, and in the

right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven suddenly

uttered a horse croak over my head. It made me start;

and then I was angry because I started. I looked up,

and the creature was sitting on a limb right over me,

looking down at me. I felt something of the same sense

of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds

that a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting

him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him.

I eyed the raven, and the raven eyed me. Nothing was said

during some seconds. Then the bird stepped a little way

along his limb to get a better point of observation,

lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his

shoulders toward me and croaked again–a croak with a

distinctly insulting expression about it. If he had

spoken in English he could not have said any more plainly

that he did say in raven, “Well, what do YOU want here?”

I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in some mean act

by a responsible being, and reproved for it. However, I

made no reply; I would not bandy words with a raven.

The adversary waited a while, with his shoulders still lifted,

his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright eye

fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more insults,

which I could not understand, further than that I

knew a portion of them consisted of language not used

in church.

I still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head