Often when our showy equipage passed some farm, the peasants stopped work and stood stock still, leaning on their hoes and looking at us. Many men doff their caps and the women courtesy, guessing no doubt, from the showy four-horse drag, it was the Kaiser himself passing.
The seclusion of the old, old hamlets in the woods, the quiet everywhere, almost makes us lonesome.
Yesterday we were invited to visit a big farmhouse a little distance from the road. The owner was a rich bauer--“very rich,” his neighbors said. Yet, his big, good-looking daughter in wooden shoes and very short petticoats, was engaged in cleaning out the stables. She came to us with the big stable fork in her hand, and in the most agreeable way showed us about the place. She was all smiles and jokes and good humor. She was “smart” too. I thought of “M’liss” in one of Bret Harte’s stories.
We saw an enormous fire-place in the kitchen, without any chimney. The smoke simply ascended, or tried to ascend, through a pyramid of boards. The room was too much for us. “Don’t the smoke hurt your eyes terribly?” said my wife to the girl’s mother, as she wiped the tears away and tried to get her breath. “Oh! yes,” answered the good woman, “it’s terrible on the eyes, but just splendid for smoking hams.”
At many places along the country roads, we passed children with baskets, gathering the manure up from the highways. This they carry into their father’s fields. But every twig, stick or stone that can deface a white smooth road, is gathered up and taken away. Each farmer, for certain fixed distances along the highway, is a “care taker” of the road, and his little income from his farm is increased by a small allowance from the public treasury.
In the vicinity of Friberg, with its wonderful waterfalls and green mountains, we see as beautiful scenery as the heart could wish.
Little of the Black Forest life or scenery is even guessed at by a traveler on the train. The characteristic things of continental life in general are no longer on the routes of public travel.