A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

if it refers to the cooking of a trout. Very well; if you

tell a German to send your trunk to you by “slow freight,”

he takes you at your word; he sends it by “slow freight,”

and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging

your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase

in the German tongue, before you get that trunk.

The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful,

when I got it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded

when it reached Heidelberg. However, it was still sound,

that was a comfort, it was not battered in the least;

the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiously careful,

in Germany, of the baggage entrusted to their hands.

There was nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we

set about our preparations.

Naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection

of Ceramics. Of course I could not take it with me,

that would be inconvenient, and dangerous besides.

I took advice, but the best brick-a-brackers were divided

as to the wisest course to pursue; some said pack the

collection and warehouse it; others said try to get it

into the Grand Ducal Museum at Mannheim for safe keeping.

So I divided the collection, and followed the advice of

both parties. I set aside, for the Museum, those articles

which were the most frail and precious.

Among these was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little

sketch of it here; [Figure 6] that thing creeping up

the side is not a bug, it is a hole. I bought this

tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred

and fifty dollars. It is very rare. The man said the

Etruscans used to keep tears or something in these things,

and that it was very hard to get hold of a broken one, now.

I also set aside my Henri II. plate. See sketch

from my pencil; [Figure 7] it is in the main correct,

though I think I have foreshortened one end of it a little

too much, perhaps. This is very fine and rare; the shape

is exceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful

decorations on it, but I am not able to reproduce them.

It cost more than the tear-jug, as the dealer said

there was not another plate just like it in the world.

He said there was much false Henri II ware around,

but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable.

He showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please;

it was a document which traced this plate’s movements

all the way down from its birth–showed who bought it,

from whom, and what he paid for it–from the first buyer

down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily up

from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said

that the whole Ceramic world would be informed that it

was now in my possession and would make a note of it,

with the price paid. [Figure 8]

There were Masters in those days, but, alas–it is not so now.

Of course the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color;

it is that old sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating,

transboreal blue which is the despair of modern art.

The little sketch which I have made of this gem cannot

and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged

to leave out the color. But I’ve got the expression, though.

However, I must not be frittering away the reader’s time

with these details. I did not intend to go into any

detail at all, at first, but it is the failing of the

true ceramiker, or the true devotee in any department

of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his

pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop

until he drops from exhaustion. He has no more sense

of the flight of time than has any other lover when talking

of his sweetheart. The very “marks” on the bottom

of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into

a gibbering ecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning

relative to help dispute about whether the stopple

of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious.