A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

pile!–behold the thief–see him blench and tremble!”

[Sensation.] Paul Hoch: Lost, lost!”–falls over the cow

in a swoon and is handcuffed. Gretchen: “Saved!” Falls

over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms

of Hans Schmidt, who springs in at that moment. Old Huss:

“What, you here, varlet? Unhand the maid and quit the place.”

Hans (still supporting the insensible girl): “Never! Cruel

old man, know that I come with claims which even you

cannot despise.”

Huss: “What, YOU? name them.”

Hans: “Listen then. The world has forsaken me, I forsook

the world, I wandered in the solitude of the forest,

longing for death but finding none. I fed upon roots,

and in my bitterness I dug for the bitterest,

loathing the sweeter kind. Digging, three days agone,

I struck a manure mine!–a Golconda, a limitless Bonanza,

of solid manure! I can buy you ALL, and have mountain

ranges of manure left! Ha-ha, NOW thou smilest a smile!”

[Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine.

Old Huss (enthusiastically): “Wake her up, shake her up,

noble young man, she is yours!” Wedding takes place on

the spot; bookkeeper restored to his office and emoluments;

Paul Hoch led off to jail. The Bonanza king of the Black

Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his

wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter

envy of everybody around.

We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn,

in a very pretty village (Ottenho”fen), and then went into

the public room to rest and smoke. There we found nine

or ten Black Forest grandees assembled around a table.

They were the Common Council of the parish. They had

gathered there at eight o’clock that morning to elect

a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four

hours at the new member’s expense. They were men of fifty

or sixty years of age, with grave good-natures faces,

and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us

by the Black Forest stories; broad, round-topped black felt

hats with the brims curled up all round; long red waistcoats

with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the

waists up between the shoulders. There were no speeches,

there was but little talk, there were no frivolities;

the Council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely,

with beer, and conducted themselves with sedate decorum,

as became men of position, men of influence, men of manure.

We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy

bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses,

water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints

and Virgins. These crucifixes, etc., are set up in

memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost

as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands.

We followed the carriage-road, and had our usual luck;

we traveled under a beating sun, and always saw the shade

leave the shady places before we could get to them.

In all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike

a piece of road at its time for being shady. We had a

particularly hot time of it on that particular afternoon,

and with no comfort but what we could get out of the fact

that the peasants at work away up on the steep mountainsides

above our heads were even worse off than we were.

By and by it became impossible to endure the intolerable

glare and heat any longer; so we struck across the ravine

and entered the deep cool twilight of the forest, to hunt

for what the guide-book called the “old road.”

We found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the

right one, though we followed it at the time with the conviction

that it was the wrong one. If it was the wrong one there

could be no use in hurrying; therefore we did not hurry,

but sat down frequently on the soft moss and enjoyed

the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes.

There had been distractions in the carriage-road–

school-children, peasants, wagons, troops of

pedestrianizing students from all over Germany–

but we had the old road to ourselves.