Twenty Years in Europe

The river Rhine is close by us here, flowing through Lake Constance. Every day in summer sees crowds of the St. Gallese rushing down to the lake by train, to bathe in its waters. The ride down there, with its glimpses of mountain valleys, blooming orchards, and shining waterfalls, is one of the most picturesque in Europe. Down by the water side are villages and walls old as the time of the Romans.

The little valleys and the plains between St. Gall and the lake, are planted with hundreds of pear orchards. In the spring, when this ocean of pear trees is in full white blossom, the ride down to the lake is truly wonderful.

Spelterini is here with his big balloon, to take people traveling above the mountain tops. Some of our friends went up for a few hours, repeatedly, and pronounce the view of the lake, mountain and valley as seen from the sky, something wonderful. He charges 200 francs for a few hours’ ride among the mist and clouds. He passed close above our house yesterday morning at a great rate. He has made a thousand ascents and never had an accident. Riding with his balloon at a height of 15,000 feet, and at an express speed is safer than riding on American railroads.

May 13, 1893.-News has come of the appointment of a new Consul General for Switzerland. The rotating machine has been put to work. I scarcely dare to complain.

A new administration at Washington can remove me from office, but it cannot take away from me the pleasure of the past years. Still I have lived so long among the delightful scenes of Switzerland I leave them with a pang.

“Aufwiedersehen,” our friends call out as they throw us their roses, the train moves, we are looking for the last time possibly on the mountains.

Part of this summer of 1893 we spent with our friends, the Witts, at Hamburg, and then together we went to the Island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, where many delightful weeks among novel scenes were ending our stay in Europe.

Later, our friends offered to take us to see Prince Bismarck, at his home at “Friedrichsruhe.”

A couple of hours’ ride from Hamburg through an uninteresting country of sand and pine trees, brought us to the little station not far from the ex-Chancellor’s house. It seemed like a villa stuck away in the woods of North Carolina, yet delegations find this hidden spot from every corner of Germany, and come here by trainfuls, to do homage to the man who made the empire. He is a greater man here on his farm than the Emperor is in Berlin on his throne. There is not much about the rather ill-kept looking estate to attract attention. There are a thousand handsomer estates all over Germany.

We wait, as directed, under the trees behind the castle (though it is no castle at all) for pretty soon the great man will come down the garden walk. Miss Witt, who has an enormous bouquet of flowers for him (she has given him flowers before), will approach him first, and then the rest of us. There come his two big Danish dogs down the path now. In a moment they are followed by a powerful looking old man who carries a big club of a cane, and wears a great slouch hat of felt. He knows what the young lady and the flowers mean very quickly, and his strong, marked face is soon in smiles. We are all presented. I speak to him in English, but he says, “Please speak German. There was a time when I spoke English, but that is almost gone.” I looked at him closely, when others were talking. His great, wrinkled, seamed face looked as powerful as his herculean frame. I could not help thinking to myself, here stands the man who overthrew Louis Napoleon, and here is he who once ruefully said, “The lives of eighty thousand human beings would have been saved were it not for me.”

He had a few kind words for all of us, and Madame Semper he remembered well. But he was getting old, and seemed on the point of feebleness; his great race was done. His dogs rubbed against his legs and looked at us as if they wanted us to stay away from their master. Shortly he lifted his great broad hat, saying: “My wife is waiting for me at breakfast. I bid you good-day.” Then he turned and walked back to the castle. We had seen Bismarck.