LETTER XI.
Cologne.
Our room was all ready for us, and it was a fine one, and a rocking-chair in it, as sure as we are here, the first one seen since leaving Paris. How home-like! Letters, too! the best welcome of all. One from you, dear, who have proved by services and self-sacrifices that ‘love’ is more than a word; and two from dear friends whose rare friendship has known no change. How eagerly we read them! How thankful to know you are all well! Oh how far away in body we feel from you to-night!
A rap at the door! A note handed me! What is this? Credentials, and a letter formally introducing our young fellow-traveller of our trip down the Rhine. He was well known by our hotel proprietor. Well, he has worked rapidly since landing to try to assure us more earnestly that he is the gentleman he seemed, and of which I was perfectly positive without his having taken all this trouble. He sends us some fresh, sweet roses, and asks if he may sit with us at table d’hôte. A little resting in our room, a little lingering at the window, from which we have a fine view, and our first, of the great cathedral, and down to dinner we go, Miss F. not forgetting to wear her share of the lovely jacqueminots. Our friend was waiting for us, and looked handsomer than ever in his fine dress-suit. We were all hungry, and did wish a little more speed could be used in serving table d’hôte dinners. If one is sight-seeing, and desires the time for something besides waiting, these long-drawn-out affairs require the patience of a Job to sit to the end of them.
After dining we walked out into one of the parks and heard excellent music, looked about the old town, guided by our German, who was familiar with every spot and who quite educated us upon Cologne and its history. Upon bidding him good-night, he said he should be happy to escort us about the next day, but previous arrangements compelled us to decline with the heartiest of thanks. He was disappointed, and the big, dreamy blue eyes rested upon the sun-browned girl with me, who looks thoroughly the tramp she is. They two converse in German, and so rapidly! I must practise German more; I can hardly follow them. Why will people talk all languages but our own as if tongues were propelled by steam?
Hotel Disch, Cologne, August 1st, 1888.—Thanks we offer for a good night’s rest and for this lovely morning. Our bell rings, and I find at our door a maid with a basket of exquisite flowers tied with blue ribbon, colored, I am sure, with the reflection of a certain pair of eyes. A card, with the donor’s name, hoping the ladies are well. A pretty morning welcome, surely! We receive a call later, and bid God-speed to our German friend, who seems as reluctant to leave us as we are to have him go. But such is travelling: we meet as ships at sea, salute each other and then pass on. Moral of this little episode: If you wish in journeying about to have plenty of attention, take a young lady with you.
Cologne, or Köln, is a large city, and in some of the streets where much of the perfume is made the odor is very evident and much more welcome than the cheese scent of Berne or the garlic-impregnated air of some of the German towns. This is a fascinating old place, and the streets of shops, gay, bright, and progressive looking, and the old, narrow, crooked thoroughfares very odd, with their queer old buildings. The garrison here contains seven thousand soldiers: think of their seven thousand ‘ribs’ at home digging potatoes. There are many churches here, old towers and fountains, an archbishop’s palace, and statues of the different German emperors, one fine one of Gen. Moltke and one of Bismarck, all good specimens of careful work. Cologne water is for sale everywhere, stores of it, in bottles and flasks of every shape, on the street corners, in the corridors of hotels, and children rush up to you and take it out of their pockets, urging you to buy. Throughout Germany I have seen the beautiful face of Queen Louise carved, chiselled, painted and photographed, but here, in an art store, I saw an engraving of the same sweet face, the loveliest of all. No wonder old Emperor William cherished her memory so sacredly, and forgot not the insults of Napoleon heaped upon his beloved, noble mother. We went, for a short time in each, to the Zoological and the Botanical gardens. We thought we would see some of the sights of the town before going into the cathedral, but the huge pile was before us at every turn and we could wait no longer to see the crowning glory of the place.
Cologne Cathedral! Dear, of this great piece of Gothic architecture, with its majestic arches, columns, pillars, windows, and all else that helps make up its wonderful beauty, I have no words to tell you. It is perfect: nothing has equalled it. We wandered about, then seated ourselves, with never before in our lives so beautiful a perspective before us, and I was so overpowered with it all that I am not sure but I should still be sitting there if F. had not said, ‘Come, we must see the chapels.’ There are seven of them, all filled with costly pictures and relics. In the treasury of the church there are gold and silver, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, and rubies enough to buy bread for all Germany. The beautiful churches of this country, the wonderful telling of sacred stories in their paintings, the speaking statues, which bring to us the ‘good tidings’ anew, the soothing, restful colors, are all great lessons and we can get much good from them. But the sacristies, filled with gold and silver in meaningless shapes, precious, costly gems imbedded in old skulls repulsive to look upon, are indeed abominations. If all these riches were turned into money to help the Saviour’s poor, would it not be a better way of doing ‘His bidding’? For the poor and the hungry are not far from the masses of wealth, wherever or in whatever form it may be. I appreciate æsthetically this dazzling display of artistic splendor and riches, but my heart goes out in pity and sympathy toward the multitude who are taxed to support it. And are not these terrible differences, whether in church or in society, the seed which may some time grow into anarchy and revolution? Even in dear, good Boston, not long ago, I heard a delicate woman, who toiled daily for her invalid husband and three little ones, say, ‘I am so discouraged to-day in my struggle for the necessities of life that it is almost maddening to take up the paper and see that Mrs. A. had a thousand dollars worth of flowers at her ball last night, that Mrs. B. wore a ten thousand dollar necklace, and so on.’