The Last Leaf / Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe

by James Kendall Hosmer

As a student of German, anxious to gain fluency of expression, and to train my ear to catch readily the popular idioms, I found that I must fill out my writing and reading by contact with men. After roving the streets of German cities, I packed a knapsack and set out upon the country-roads. I was, as the Germans say, gut zu Fuss, a stout walker, and I learned to employ for my longer expeditions the Bummel-Zug, an institution I commend highly to all in my situation. The Bummel-Zug is simply a "way" freight-train, to which in my time was attached a car for third-class passengers. It stopped at every village, and the fare was very low. It was convenient, therefore, for those too poor to be in a hurry, and for travellers like me whose purpose could be better served by loitering than by haste. The train proceeded leisurely, giving ample time for deliberate survey of the land, and the frequent pauses of indefinite length afforded opportunity for walks through the streets of remote hamlets and even into the country about, where the peasants with true Teuton Gemüthlichkeit always welcomed a man who came from America.

Thus on my legs and by Bummel-Zug I wandered far, arriving one pleasant day at the ancient city of Salzburg, close to the Bavarian Alps. I was anxious to see something of the Tyrol, and had been told that the Königs-See offered the finest and most characteristic scenery of that region. Salzburg was a suitable point of departure. The sky darkened and it began to rain heavily. Berchtesgaden, in the mountains, the nearest village to the Königs-See, was only to be reached by Eilwagen, a modification of the diligence, which forty years ago still held its place on the Alpine roads. I stood at the door of the inn, observing the company who were to be my fellow-passengers. There were two or three from the outside world, like myself, a few mountaineers with suggestions of the Tyrol in their garb, and one figure in a high degree picturesque, a Franciscan friar in guise as mediaeval as possible. His coarse, brown robe wrapped him from head to foot. A knotted cord bound his waist, the ends depending toward the pavement and swinging with his rosary. His feet were shod with sandals, and his head was bare, though an ample cowl was at hand to shelter it. His head needed no tonsure for age had made him nearly bald. His shaven face was kind and strong and he was in genial touch with the by-standers, to whom no doubt such a figure was not novel. Incongruously enough, the friar held over his head in the pouring rain a modern umbrella, his only concession to the storm and to modernity. Presently we climbed in for the journey, and I was a trifle taken aback when the monk by chance followed me directly, and as we settled into our seats was my close vis-à-vis. As we bumped along the rough road our legs became dove-tailed together, I as well as he wrapped in the coarse folds of his monkish robe, the rosary as convenient to my hand as to his, and as the vehicle swayed our heads dodged each other as we rocked back and forth. Thrown thus, as it were into the embrace of the past, I made the most of it and got as far as might be into the mediaeval. I found my friar charmingly companionable. His Bavarian patois was not easy to follow, nor could he catch readily the speech I had been learning in the schools. But we made shift and had much talk as we drove through the storm into the highlands. He was a brother in the monastery at Salzburg, but being out of health, was making his way to a hospice of his order above the valley. He had heard of America, and knew there were houses of his order in that strange land. He was doubtful of its location, and possibly an American was a creature with whom he had never till then been in touch. Under the scrutiny of his mild eyes I was being studied as a queer outlandish specimen, as he certainly was to me. We parted at last as good friends, his head now enveloped in the cowl, his sandals pattering off in the dusk toward the little cell that awaited him in the hospice, while I sought a place by the fire in the inn of Berchtesgaden. I learned afterward that he was well known and much venerated in Salzburg.

I came into the mountain-nook oddly companioned, and my exit thence was equally so, though greatly in contrast. For a day or two I was storm-bound, and felt the depression natural in a remote solitude, wrapped in by rain and fog, with no society but an unintelligible mountaineer or two. At last it cleared and the revulsion was inspiring. I found myself in a little green vale hemmed in by magnificent heights whose rocky summits were covered with freshly-fallen snow. Close at hand rose the Watzmann, a soaring pyramid whose summit was cleft into two sharp peaks inclined into some semblance of a bishop's mitre. My recent association with the monk had made vivid the thought of the old church, and it seemed fitting that there should be lifted high in air such a symbol of the domination under which the region lay. But my Protestant eyes regarded it cheerfully, glad to have within range an object so picturesque. I forthwith strapped on my knapsack, buckled my belt, and strode out for the Königs-See, which lay not far beyond. I walked briskly for a mile or two, stimulated by the abounding oxygen of the highland air, but presently found myself where the road forked and there was nothing to indicate which was my right path. The solitude seemed complete, but as I stood hesitating, I was relieved by the appearance of a pedestrian who emerged from a by-way. As I framed an inquiry I was deterred by a certain augustness in the stranger. I had rarely seen a man of finer bearing. His stature was commanding, his figure, even in the rough, loose walking-dress he wore, was full of symmetry. His elastic step showed vigour, and his face under his broad-brimmed Tyrolese hat had much manly beauty. Was he perhaps a prince in disguise? His friendly salutation, given in deep masculine tones with a good-natured smile, put me at ease as I told him my strait. He said in good German, which I was glad once more to hear after my experience of the mountain patois, that he was on the way to the Königs-See, that he knew the road, and we would walk on together. I accommodated myself to his stride and we settled into a pace which carried us rapidly toward our goal, meanwhile talking cheerfully. I had found it usually a good passport to say I was an American and I withheld nothing as to my antecedents and my present errand in Germany. He was more reticent. He lived in Prussia and was at the moment taking an outing. His affability did not go the length of revealing his true character. If he were a high personage incognito, I was not to know it.

We reached at last the shore of the Königs-See, a blue, deep lake at a high elevation, encircled by lofty peaks, splintered, storm-beaten, and capped by snow which never melts, far above the range of grass and trees. A group of women on the beach had ready two or three broad and rudely-built boats, and noisily clamoured for our patronage. We chose what seemed the best, and the women rowers with stout arms soon propelled us far from shore into the midst of the Alpine sublimity. A silence fell, broken only by the oar-beats. Then, where the precipices rose highest we paused. Suddenly a gun was fired. It broke upon the silence startlingly loud, and after an interval the report reverberated in a series of crashes from height after height, dying down into a dull murmur from the steep most distant. I was awed by the sight and the sound, and awed too, by my companion. He had thrown off his hat and knapsack and stood with his fine stature at the bow. His classic face was turned upward to the peaks, and with a look as if he felt their power. He waved his arms toward them as if in a salutation to things sentient. The man seemed to befit the environment, majestic though it was.

We returned sooner than we desired from our excursion on the water, the boat-women being over eager for new passengers. My companion resumed his knapsack and it was time to part. To his question as to my plan I replied that I was there simply for the scenery, that I purposed to make my way back to Salzburg on foot by the paths that promised most, and should be guided by whatever I might learn. He said that he, too, was bound for Salzburg, walking for pleasure; and when I thereupon suggested that we might go on together, he readily fell in, and we trudged forward. Comradeship grew strong as the day passed, then a night in an unfrequented inn, then another day. We discussed things near and far, ancient and recent, I talking most but he was always genial and quietly responsive, and my confidence was invited. I told him of the little fresh-water college in the West with which I was associated, my functions being partly pedagogic and partly pastoral, of the embarrassments of co-education as we found them, the difficulty in the uplift of too frivolous youth to a high moral and spiritual plane, the embarrassment in curbing characters too reckless into decorum and propriety. He listened sympathetically, with no discoverable cynicism in the rather grave smile he usually wore. As to whom he might be, he remained constantly reticent, though my curiosity increased as the hours flew. We passed not far from two or three mountain resorts, where tourists were gathered. Near such my companion showed some nervousness. There might be people there who knew him, and it suited him for the time to remain by himself. This I took as some small confirmation of my suspicion that he was a great personage. Physically certainly he was superbly endowed. The roads were rough and often steep, and I found the tramp fatiguing; but when I asked if he, too, were not tired, he laughed at the idea, tossing his burden or taking an extra climb as fresh as at the start. At night our cots were in the same room. As he stripped off his shirt and stood with head pillared upon a most stately neck, and massive, well-moulded chest and shoulders, he was statuesque indeed.

At last Salzburg came in sight. Though we had become quite intimate I had made no progress in penetrating to my comrade's true character. I had laid many an innocent little trap to induce him to speak more openly, but no slip on his part ever betrayed him. We entered the city and sat down together at a table in a public garden, near the castle of the old Bishops of Salzburg, ordering for each a glass of light wine, the parting-cup. Already, since our entrance into the city things had occurred which partly confirmed the theory I had formed as to the distinction of my comrade, and also aroused in my mind doubts not quite comfortable. He was an object of interest in the well-dressed crowd. That he was a conspicuously handsome man in a measure explained that, but there were signs, too, that some recognised him as a person well-known. When we were seated in the garden actual acquaintances began to appear, agile athletic young men, who were deferential but familiar. There were ladies, too, modest enough, but certainly unconventional, nimble free-footed beings, with feathers and ribbons streaming airily as they flitted. These, like the men, were deferential to my comrade, yet familiar. There seemed to be a renewing of some old tie that all were glad to reconnect. The young men were actively demonstrative, the ladies wove in and out smilingly, and my comrade in the midst beamed and grew voluble. Was it an environment into which a quiet American college functionary could properly fit? No due bounds were transgressed, but the atmosphere was certainly very Bohemian. My prince incognito, was he perhaps the Prince of Pilsen? While this happy mingling was going forward I sat somewhat aloof, disconcerted that my cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces were thus crumbling into comic opera. But now my comrade approached me, aglow with social excitement, and, with a franker look in his eyes than he had before shown, addressed me: "Mein lieber Herr Professor, we have had a good ramble together and talked about many things. You have been confidential with me, and hoped that I would be with you. I have preferred to hold back, but now as we part I ought to tell you who I am. I am the prémier danseur in the ballet of the Royal Opera House in Berlin. Worn with the heavy work in Fantasca, which we produced elaborately and which ran long, I came down here when the season closed, for change and rest, and so fell in with you. These young Herren and Damen are the coryphés and figurantes, who in Berlin or in other cities have taken part with me in productions. Good people they are and unsurpassed as a corps de ballet." We touched glasses, shook hands, and I went my way leaving Comus with his rout, guileless, I hope, as Milton's innocent "Lady," but such scales never fell from her starry eyes as fell from mine. I knew well about Fantasca. During my last weeks in Berlin it had been much talked about, a splendid theatrical spectacle put on with consummate art, and lavish expenditure. I had not seen it. Heredity from eight Puritan generations reinforced by impecuniosity had kept me from that. But I had heard of the wonderful visions of beauty and grace. My handsome comrade of the Bavarian Alps had been at the centre of it all, the god Apollo, or whatever glittering divinity or genius it was that swayed the enchantments and led in the rhythmic circlings. Good cause indeed I had had to admire his physical beauty. He had been picked out for that no doubt among thousands, then painfully trained for years until in figure and frame he was a model.

The gay pleasure garden in which we had parted lay close to a gloomy monastic structure, centuries old, that from a height dominated the little town. The garden and the structure were symbols of what was most salient in that country—the ancient church braced against progress, with its power broken in no way, and on the other hand of a life interpenetrated with things graceful and refined, with art, music, and poetry, but seamed, too, with frivolity and what makes for the pleasures of sense. My two friends also were in their way types,—the cowled Franciscan, aloof in a mediaeval seclusion though he breathed nineteenth-century air, and the dancer whom I encountered in the vale, above which the Watzmann upholds forever its solemn mitre. But they were good fellows both, my comrade in and my comrade out. The monk's heart was not too shrivelled to flow with human kindness, and the dancer had not unlearned in the glare of the foot-lights the graces of a gentleman.

I profess to be a man of peace. Through training, environment, and calling I ought to be so, and yet there is a fibre in any make-up which has always throbbed strangely to the drum. Is it perhaps a streak of heredity? In almost every noteworthy war since the foundation of the country, men of my line have borne a part. I count ancestors who stood among the minute-men at Concord bridge. Another was in the redoubt at Bunker Hill. In the earlier time two great-great-grandfathers went out against Montcalm and were good soldiers in the Old French War. Still earlier a progenitor, whose name I bear, faced the Indian peril in King Philip's War, and was among the slain in the gloomy Sudbury fight Perhaps it is a trace from these ancient forbears still lingering in my blood that will respond when the trumpets blow, however I strive to repress it, and it has given me qualms.

I was not easy in mind when I stood on the tower of St. Stephen's Church, in Vienna more than forty years ago, to find that what I sought most eagerly in the superb landscape was not the steep Kahlenberg, not the plumy woods of Schönbrunn, not the Danube pouring grandly eastward, nor the picturesque city at my feet; but the little hamlets just outside the suburbs, and the wide-stretching grain-field close by, turning yellow under the July sun, where Napoleon fought the battles of Aspern and Wagram. Nor was I quite easy when I set out to climb the St. Gotthard Pass, to find that although the valley below Airolo was so green with fertile pasture, and from the glaciers above me the heavens were pricked so boldly by the splintered peaks, I was thinking most where it was precisely that old Suwarrow dug the grave and threatened to bury himself, when his army refused to follow him; then how he must have looked when he had subdued them, riding forward in his sheepskin, or whatever rude Russian dress he wore, this uncouth hero who needed no scratching to be proved Tartar, while his loving host pressed after him into every death-yielding terror that man or nature could throw across his path.

That I had good reason for my uneasiness, on second thoughts, I do not believe. Nor do I believe it is just for you, high-toned friend, to censure me as somewhat low and brutal, when I confess that of all one can see in Europe, nothing thrilled me quite so much as the great historic battle-fields. Nothing deserves so to interest man as man himself; and what spots, after all, are so closely and nobly connected with man as the spots where he has fought? That we are what we are, indeed that we are at all,—that any race is what it is or is at all,—was settled on certain great fields of decision to which we as well as every race can point back. And then nothing absorbs us like a spectacle of pain and pathos! Tragedy enchants, while it shocks. The field of battle is tragedy the most shocking; is it doing indignity to our puzzling nature to say it is tragedy most absorbing? And there is another side. Once at midnight, in the light of our bivouac-fire, our captain told us in low tones that next day we were to go into battle. He was a rude fellow, but the word or two he spoke to us was about duty. And I well remember what the men said, as we looked by the fire-light to see if the rifles were in order. They would go into fire because duty said, "Save the country!" and when, soon after, the steeply-sloping angle of the enemy's works came into view, ominously red in the morning light, and crowned with smoke and fire, while the air hummed about our ears as if swarming with angry bees, and this one and that one fell, there was scarcely one who, as he pulled his cap close down and pushed ahead in the skirmish-line, was not thinking of duty. They were boys from farm and factory, not greatly better, to say the most, than their fellows anywhere; and we may be sure that thought of duty has always much to do with the going forward of weaponed men amongst the weapons. Men do fight, no doubt, from mere recklessness, from hope of plunder or glory; and sometimes they have been scourged to it. But more often, where one in four or five is likely to fall, the nobler motive is uppermost with men and felt with burning earnestness too, which only the breath of the near-at-hand death can fan up. No! there is reason enough why battle-fields should be, as they are, places of pilgrimage. The remoteness of the struggle hardly diminishes the interest with which we visit the scene; Marathon is as sacred as if the Greeks conquered there last year. Nor, on the other hand, do we need poetic haze from a century or two of intervening time: Gettysburg was a consecrated spot to all the world before its dead were buried. There need be no charm of nature; there are tracts of mere sand in dreary Brandenburg, where old Frederick, with Prussia in his hand, supple and tough as if plaited into a nation out of whip-cord, scourged the world; and these tracts are precious. On the other hand, the grandest natural features seem almost dwarfed and paltry beside this overmastering interest. On the top of the Grimsel Pass there is a melancholy, lonely lake which touches the spirit as much as the Rhone glacier close by, or the soaring Finster-Aarhorn, the Todten See (Sea of the Dead), beneath whose waters are buried soldiers who fell in battle there on the Alpine crags. Had I defined all this, I need not have felt uneasy on St. Stephen's spire or the St. Gotthard. We are not necessarily brutal if our feet turn with especial willingness toward battle-fields. There man is most in earnest; his sense of duty perhaps at its best; the sacrifice greatest, for it is life. Theirs are the most momentous decisions for weal or woe; theirs the tragedy beyond all other tremendous and solemn. It is right that the sacrifice they have witnessed should possess an alchemy to make their acres golden.