AFTER Italy and Switzerland the scenery of the Rhine seemed very mild and unpretentious to me, yet it was very beautiful. The Hudson from Albany to New York is far more imposing¹. A score of American rivers such as the Penobscot, the New in West Virginia, the James above Lynchburg, the Rio Grande, and others would make the Rhine seem simple by comparison; yet it has an individuality so distinct that it is unforgetable. I always marvel² over this thing—personality. Nothing under the sun explains it. So, often you can say “this is finer,” “that is more imposing,” “by comparison this is nothing,” but when you have said all this, the thing with personality rises up and triumphs. So it is with the Rhine. Like millions before me and millions yet to come, I watched its slopes, its castles, its islands, its pretty little German towns passing in review before the windows of this excellent train and decided⁴ that in its way nothing could be finer. It had personality. A snatch of old wall, with peach trees in blossom; a long thin side-wheel steamer, one smokestack fore³ and another aft, labeled “William Egan Gesellschaft”; a dismantled⁵ castle tower, with a flock of crows flying about it and hills laid out in ordered squares of vines gave it all the charm it needed.
 
When Coblenz was reached, I bustled⁶ out, ready to inspect Mayen at once. Another disappointment. Mayen was not at Coblenz but fifteen or eighteen miles438 away on a small branch road, the trains of which ran just four times a day, but I did not learn this until, as usual, I had done considerable investigating. According to my map Mayen appeared to be exactly at the junction⁷ of the Rhine and the Moselle, which was here, but when I asked a small boy dancing along a Coblenz street where the Moselle was, he informed me, “If you walk fast you will get there in half an hour!”
 
When I reached the actual juncture⁸ of the Rhine and the Moselle, however, I found I was mistaken; I was entertained at first by a fine view of the two rivers, darkly walled by hills and a very massive and, in a way, impressive equestrian⁹ statue of Emperor William I, armed in the most flamboyant¹⁰ and aggressive military manner and looking sternly down on the fast-traveling and uniting waters of the two rivers. Idling about the base of this monument, to catch sightseers, was a young picture-post-card seller with a box of views of the Rhine, Coblenz, Cologne and other cities, for sale. He was a very humble-looking youth,—a bit doleful,—who kept following me about until I bought some post-cards. “Where is Mayen?” I asked, as I began to select a few pictures of things I had and had not seen, for future reference.
 
“Mayence?” he asked doubtfully. “Mayence? Oh, that is a great way from here. Mayence is up the river near Frankfort.”
 
“No, no,” I replied irritably¹². (This matter was getting to be a sore point with me.) “I have just come from Mayence. I am looking for Mayen. Isn’t it over there somewhere?” I pointed¹³ to the fields over the river.
 
He shook his head. “Mayen!” he said. “I don’t think there is such a place.”
 
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “what are you talking439 about? Here it is on the map. What is that? Do you live here in Coblenz?”
 
“Gewiss!” he replied. “I live here.”
 
“Very good, then. Where is Mayen?”
 
“I have never heard of it,” he replied.
 
“My God!” I exclaimed to myself, “perhaps it was destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War. Maybe there isn’t any Mayen.”
 
“You have lived here all your life,” I said, turning to my informant, “and you have never heard of Mayen?”
 
“Mayen, no. Mayence, yes. It is up the river near Frankfort.”
 
“Don’t tell me that again!” I said peevishly¹⁴, and walked off. The elusiveness¹⁵ of my father’s birthplace was getting on my nerves. Finally I found a car-line which ended at the river and a landing wharf¹⁶ and hailed the conductor and motorman who were idling together for a moment.
 
“Where is Mayen?” I asked.
 
“Mayence?” they said, looking at me curiously¹⁷.
 
“No, no. M-a-y-e-n, Mayen—not Mayence. It’s a small town around here somewhere.”
 
“Mayen! Mayen!” they repeated. “Mayen!” And then frowned.
 
“Oh, God!” I sighed. I got out my map. “Mayen—see?” I said.
 
“Oh, yes,” one of them replied brightly, putting up a finger. “That is so. There is a place called Mayen! It is out that way. You must take the train.”
 
“How many miles?” I asked.
 
“About fifteen. It will take you about an hour and a half.”
 
I went back to the station and found I must wait another two hours before my train left. I had reached the point where I didn’t care a picayune whether I ever440 got to my father’s town or not. Only a dogged determination not to be beaten kept me at it.
 
It was at Coblenz, while waiting for my train, that I had my first real taste of the German army. Around a corner a full regiment¹⁸ suddenly came into view. They swung past me and crossed a bridge over the Rhine, their brass¹⁹ helmets glittering. Their trousers were gray and their jackets red, and they marched with a slap, slap, slap of their feet that was positively²⁰ ominous²¹. Every man’s body was as erect²² as a poker²³; every man’s gun was carried with almost loving grace over his shoulder. They were all big men, stolid²⁴ and broad-chested. As they filed over the bridge, four abreast²⁵, they looked, at that distance, like a fine scarlet²⁶ ribbon with a streak²⁷ of gold in it. They eventually disappeared between the green hills on the other side.
 
In another part of the city I came upon a company of perhaps fifty, marching in loose formation and talking cheerfully to one another. Behind me, coming toward the soldiers, was an officer, one of those band-box gentlemen in the long gray, military coat of the Germans, the high-crowned, low-visored cap, and lacquered boots. I learned before I was out of Germany to listen for the clank of their swords. The moment the sergeant²⁹ in charge of the men saw this officer in the distance, he gave vent²⁸ to a low command which brought the men four by four instantly. In the next breath their guns, previously³⁰ swinging loosely in their hands, were over their shoulders and as the officer drew alongside a sharp “Vorwärts!” produced that wonderful jack-knife motion “the goose-step”—each leg brought rigidly³¹ to a level with the abdomen³² as they went slap—slap—slapping by, until the officer was gone. Then, at a word, they fell into their old easy formation again and were human beings once more.
 
 
It was to me a most vivid glimpse of extreme military efficiency. All the while I was in Germany I never saw a lounging soldier. The officers, all men of fine stature³³, were so showily tailored as to leave a sharp impression. They walked briskly, smartly, defiantly³⁴, with a tremendous air of assurance but not of vain-glory. They were so superior to anything else in Germany that for me they made it. But to continue.
 
At half-past two my train departed and I entered a fourth-class compartment—the only class one could book for on this branch road. They were hard, wooden-seated little cars, as stiff and heavy as cars could possibly be. My mind was full of my father’s ancestral heath and the quaint³⁵ type of life that must have been lived here a hundred years before. This was a French border country. My father, when he ran away, had escaped into Alsace, near by. He told me once of being whipped for stealing cherries, because his father’s house adjoined the priest’s yard and a cherry-tree belonging to that holy man had spread its branches, cherry-laden, over the walls, and he had secretly feasted upon the fruit at night. His stepmother, informed by the priest, whipped him. I wondered if I could find that stone wall.
 
The train was now running through a very typical section of old-time Germany. Solid, healthy men and buxom³⁶ women got leisurely³⁷ on and off at the various small but well-built stations. You could feel distinctly a strong note of commercial development here. Some small new factory buildings were visible at one place and another. An occasional real-estate sign, after the American fashion, was in evidence. The fields looked well and fully¹¹ tilled. Hills were always in the distance somewhere.
 
As the train pulled into one small station, Metternich by name, I saw a tall, raw-boned yokel³⁸, lounging on the442 platform. He was a mere³⁹ boy, nineteen or twenty, six feet tall, broad-shouldered, horny-handed, and with as vacuous⁴⁰ a face as it is possible for an individual to possess. A cheap, wide-brimmed, soft hat, offensively new, and of a dusty mud color, sat low over one ear; and around it, to my astonishment⁴¹, was twined a slim garland of flowers and leaves which, interwoven and chained, hung ridiculously down his back. He was all alone, gazing sheepishly about him and yet doing his best to wear his astounding⁴³ honors with an air of bravado⁴⁴. I was looking at his collarless shirt, his big feet and hands and his bow legs, when I heard a German in the next seat remark to his neighbor, “He won’t look like that long.”
 
“Three months—he’ll be fine.”
 
They went on reading their papers and I fell to wondering what they could mean.
 
At the next station were five more yokels⁴⁵, all similarly crowned, and around them a bevy⁴⁶ of rosy⁴⁷, healthy village girls. These five, constituting at once a crowd and a center of attention, were somewhat more assured—more swaggering—than the lone⁴² youth we had seen.
 
“What is that?” I asked the man over the seat. “What are they doing?”
 
“They’ve been drawn⁴⁸ for the army,&rd............