A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

any use, I’ve got to stay here, till the old man drops

the rag and give the word–yes, SIR, right here in this

——country I’ve got to linger till the old man says

COME!–and you bet your bottom dollar, Johnny, it AIN’T

just as easy as it is for a cat to have twins!”

At the end of this profane and cordial explosion he

fetched a prodigious “WHOOSH!” to relieve his lungs

and make recognition of the heat, and then he straightway

dived into his narrative again for “Johnny’s” benefit,

beginning, “Well, ——it ain’t any use talking,

some of those old American words DO have a kind

of a bully swing to them; a man can EXPRESS himself

with ’em–a man can get at what he wants to SAY, dontchuknow.”

When we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was

about to lose the Reverend, he showed so much sorrow,

and begged so hard and so earnestly that the Reverend’s heart

was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings–

so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a

right Christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings,

and sat in the surf-beat of his slang and profanity

till near midnight, and then left him–left him pretty

well talked out, but grateful “clear down to his frogs,”

as he expressed it. The Reverend said it had transpired

during the interview that “Cholley” Adams’s father

was an extensive dealer in horses in western New York;

this accounted for Cholley’s choice of a profession.

The Reverend brought away a pretty high opinion of

Cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for

a useful citizen; he considered him rather a rough gem,

but a gem, nevertheless.

CHAPTER XXI

[Insolent Shopkeepers and Gabbling Americans]

Baden-Baden sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural

and artificial beauties of the surroundings are combined

effectively and charmingly. The level strip of ground

which stretches through and beyond the town is laid

out in handsome pleasure grounds, shaded by noble trees

and adorned at intervals with lofty and sparkling

fountain-jets. Thrice a day a fine band makes music

in the public promenade before the Conversation House,

and in the afternoon and evening that locality is populous

with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march

back and forth past the great music-stand and look very

much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise.

It seems like a rather aimless and stupid existence.

A good many of these people are there for a real

purpose, however; they are racked with rheumatism,

and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths.

These invalids looked melancholy enough, limping about on

their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over

all sorts of cheerless things. People say that Germany,

with her damp stone houses, is the home of rheumatism.

If that is so, Providence must have foreseen that it

would be so, and therefore filled the land with the

healing baths. Perhaps no other country is so generously

supplied with medicinal springs as Germany. Some of

these baths are good for one ailment, some for another;

and again, peculiar ailments are conquered by combining

the individual virtues of several different baths.

For instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks

the native hot water of Baden-Baden, with a spoonful

of salt from the Carlsbad springs dissolved in it.

That is not a dose to be forgotten right away.

They don’t SELL this hot water; no, you go into the

great Trinkhalle, and stand around, first on one foot

and then on the other, while two or three young girls

sit pottering at some sort of ladylike sewing-work

in your neighborhood and can’t seem to see you –polite

as three-dollar clerks in government offices.

By and by one of these rises painfully, and

“stretches”–stretches

fists and body heavenward till she raises her heels from

the floor, at the same time refreshing herself with a yawn

of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears

behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is

constructed inside–then she slowly closes her cavern,

brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward,