There is a true grandeur in simplicity when the occasion is one of solemn things.
Next day my active and pleasant companion had to leave me on his return to England. Not satisfied with a fortnight's rifle practice at Wimbledon, where the best prize of the year was won by his skill, he must return to the moors and coverts for more deadly sport; and the calls of more important business, besides, required his presence at home. He paddled down the Rhine to Cologne, and on the way several times performed the difficult feat of hooking on his canoe to a steamer going at full speed.
Meantime, my boat went along with me by railway to Freyburg, from whence the new voyage was really to begin, for as yet the Rob Roy had not paddled in parts unknown.
CHAPTER III.
Höllenthal Pass—Ladies—Black Forest—Night Music—Beds—Lake Titisee—Pontius Pilate—Storm—Starers—Singers—Source of the Danube.
Planning your summer tour is one of the most agreeable of occupations. It is in June or July that the Foreign Bradshaw becomes suddenly of intense interest, and the well-known pages of "Steamers and Railways"—why, it is worth while being a bachelor to be able to read each of these as part of your sketched-out plan, and (oh, selfish thought!) to have only one mind to consult as to whither away.
All this pleasure is a good deal influenced, however, by true answers to these questions,—Have you worked hard in working time, so as to be entitled to play in these playhours? Is this to be a vacation of refreshment, or an idle lounge and killing of time? Are you going off to rest, and to recruit delicate health, or with vigour to enjoy a summer of active exertion?
But now the infallible Bradshaw could not help me with the canoe one iota, and Baedeker was not written for a boat; so at Freyburg my plans resolved themselves into the simple direction, "Go at once to the source of the Danube."
Next morning, therefore, found the Rob Roy in a cart, and the grey-clothed traveller walking beside it on the dusty Höllenthal road. The gay, light-hearted exultation of being strong and well, and on a right errand, and with unknown things to do and places to see and people to meet, who can describe this? How easy it is at such times to be glad, and to think this is being "thankful."