It is a most absurd poem. There must necessarily be a lack of woman’s tears around a shot soldier in a foreign land, for no government on earth could afford its soldiers any such luxury. How, possibly, could a government send out a complement of wives, sisters, cousins and aunts to nurse and weep over each wounded individual? And then this soldier, mortally wounded, instead of dying properly, goes on through nearly two hundred lines to send messages to everybody he ever knew in Bingen, ending each message with:
“Fair Bingen on the Rhine.”
And so, as the boat approached Bingen, all the excursionists, especially the sweet girls from the seminaries, who were on their Summer vacation, murmured softly:
“For I was born at Bingen—fair Bingen on the Rhine.”
And one young divinity student, with long hair, and a high forehead, and long, narrow white hands, deliberately recited the whole poem with what he firmly believed to be “expression,” which consisted in ending each sentence with the upward inflection. The ineffable nuisance had spent the night in committing the drivel to memory, and he spared us never a line.
The school-girls all said, “How nice!” Tibbitts went below and amused himself with a bottle of wine, and the majority of the other passengers walked forward where they could smoke.
And then the real worry of life began. The dozen or more young men with high foreheads, who did hear the “reader” through, sought you out, and collared you, and said: “Did you hear Mr. —— read Bingen? He thinks he can read, but he can’t. Now this is the proper way to read that poem.”
And he went right on, and read it to you as he thought it should be done. There were thirteen of them.
THE MOUSE TOWER.
Scarcely has this view faded from sight before we pass the ruined towers of a castle erected in 1210, and destroyed by the French in 1689. Just opposite this ruin is the famous Mouse Tower, a small, circular tower, built of massive stone. It takes its name from the legend of Hatto, Archbishop of Mayence. The legend runs that during a great famine in the land thereabouts, the poor people were sorely distressed for corn, and vainly besought Archbishop Hatto, who had graneries full of the previous year’s crop, to aid them in their time of want. At length he promised that to all who should be at his barn on a certain morning he would give corn. Of course the poor people flocked thither, and when the barn was full he locked the doors, and, despite their piteous cries for mercy, set the barn on fire, and laughed at their cries, comparing them to mice that had come to carry away his corn.