One day in the month of June, 1845, Master Zacharias’ fishing-basket was so full of salmon-trout, about three o’clock in the afternoon, that the good man was loath to take any more; for, as Pathfinder says: “We must leave some for to-morrow!” After having washed his in a stream and carefully covered them with field-sorrel […]

On the 29th of July, 1835, Kasper Boeck, a shepherd of the little village of Hirschwiller, with his large felt hat tipped back, his wallet of stringy sackcloth hanging at his hip, and his great tawny dog at his heels, presented himself at about nine o’clock in the evening at the house of the burgomaster, […]

The warm mineral waters of Spinbronn, situated in the Hundsrueck, several leagues from Pirmesens, formerly enjoyed a magnificent reputation. All who were afflicted with gout or gravel in Germany repaired thither; the savage aspect of the country did not deter them. They lodged in pretty cottages at the head of the defile; they bathed in […]

About this time (said Christian), poor as a church mouse, I took refuge in the roof of an old house in Minnesaenger Street, Nuremberg, and made my nest in the corner of the garret. I was compelled to work over my straw bed to reach the window, but this window was in the gable end, […]

CHAPTER I. My worthy uncle, Bernard Hertzog, the historian and antiquary, surmounted with his grand three-cornered hat and wig, and with a long iron-shod mountain-pole firmly grasped in his hand, was coming down one evening by the Luppersberg, hailing every turn in the landscape with enthusiastic exclamations. Years had never quenched in him the love […]

“As you go from Motiers-Navers to Boudry, on your way to Neufchatel,” said the young professor of botany, “you follow a road between two walls of rocks of immense height; they reach a perpendicular elevation of five or six hundred feet, and are hung with wild plants, the mountain basil (thymus alpinus), ferus (polypodium), the […]

“If any one thing distresses my dear aunt,” said Caspar, “more than my fondness for Sebaldus Dick’s tavern, it is that there is an artist in the family! “Dame Catherine would have been glad to see me an advocate, a priest, or a councillor. If I had become a councillor, like Monsieur Andreas Van Berghem; […]

Note This story, allowing for the exercise of fancy in its construction, is only too faithful a picture of German student life and habits, with its ignorance or disregard of the Christianity taught us in the Gospel, its only half-concealed leaning towards the ancient systems of religion properly known as heathen, and its careless indifference […]

When my excellent uncle Christian Haas, burgomaster of Lauterbach, died, I had a good situation as maitre de chapelle, or precentor, under the Grand Duke Yeri Peter, with a salary of fifteen hundred florins, notwithstanding which I was a poor man still. Uncle Christian knew exactly how I was situated, and yet had never sent […]

I On the day before Christmas of the year 1832, my friend Wilfred, with his double-bass slung over his back, and I, with my violin under my arm, started to walk from the Black Forest to Heidelberg. It was unusually snowy weather; as far as we could see across the great, deserted plain, there was […]

CHAPTER I. Just at the end of the village of Dosenheim, in Alsace, about fifty yards from the gravelly road that leads into the wood, is a pretty cottage surrounded with an orchard, the flat roof loaded with boulder-stones, the gable-end looking down the valley. Flights of pigeons wheel around it, hens are scratching and […]