We meet of course everywhere groups of students with their dainty little canes, their caps of blue or red or gold or white, and their altogether jaunty aspect. The white-capped young men are of noble birth. Some of them wear, in addition to their white caps, ornaments of white court-plaster upon their cheeks and noses, as memorials of recent strife with some plebeian foe. To republican eyes they are no better looking than their fellows, and it may be said that few of these scholastic young gentlemen, titled or otherwise, who in knots of three or five or more, accompanied by great dogs, often blockade the extremely narrow pavement, manifest their pleasing alacrity in gallantly scattering, and in giving place aux dames as might be desired.
It has been snowing persistently of late. More snow has fallen than Heidelberg has seen in many years, and the students have indulged in unlimited sleighing. The Heidelberg sleigh is an indescribable object. Its profile, if one may so speak, looks like a huge, red, decapitated swan. It has two seats, and is dragged by two ponderous horses with measured tread and slow, while the driver clings in a marvellous way to the back of the equipage, incessantly brandishing an enormously long whip. Sometimes a long line of these sleighs is seen, in each of which are four students starting out for a pleasure-trip. The young men fold their arms and lean back in an impressive manner. Their coquettish caps are even more expressive than usual. The curious thing is, that, apart from the evidence of our senses, they seem to be dashing along with the utmost rapidity. There is something in the intrepid bearing of the students, in the vociferations and loud whip-crackings of the driver, that suggests dangerous speed. On the contrary the elephantine steeds jog stolidly on, quite unmoved by the constant din; the students continue to wear their adventurous, peril-seeking air, and the undaunted man behind valiantly cracks his whip.
The contrast between the rate at which they go and the rate at which they seem to imagine that they are going is most comical. The heart is moved with pity for the benighted young men who do not know what sleighing is, and one would like to send home for a few superior American sleighs as rewards of merit for good boys at the university.
The thing with the least warmth and Christian kindness about it in Heidelberg is the stove. There may be stoves here that have some conscientious appreciation of the grave responsibilities devolving upon them in bitter cold weather, but such have not come within the range of my observation.
My idea of a Heidelberg stove is a brown, terra-cotta, lukewarm piece of furniture, upon which one leans,—literally with nonchalance,—while listening to attacks upon American customs and manners from representatives of the Swiss and German nations. The tall white porcelain stoves which somebody calls “family monuments,” are at least agreeable to the eye. But these are neither ornamental nor wholly ugly, neither tall nor short, white nor black, hot nor cold. They have neither virtues nor vices. We feel only scorn for the hopeless incapacity of a stove that cannot at any period of its career burn our fingers. It is, as a stove, a total failure, and it makes but an indifferently good elbow-rest.
However deficient in blind adoration for our fatherland we may have been at home, it only needs a few weeks' absence from it, during which time we hear it constantly ridiculed and traduced, to make us fairly bristle with patriotism.
It is marvellous how like boastful children sensible people will sometimes talk when a chance remark has transformed a playful, friendly comparison of the customs of different nations into a war of words. Often one is reminded of the story of the two small boys, each of whom was striving manfully to sustain the honor of his family.
“We've got a sewing-machine.”
“We've got a pianner.”
“My mother's got a plaid shawl.”