"The inn at Broek was another example of the same neatness. Here we took a little refreshment before going into the village. We walked of course, for no carriage, not even a wheelbarrow, appeared to be allowed any more than in a gentleman's parlor. Everything about the exterior of the houses and gardens was as carefully cared for as the furniture and embellishments of the interior. The streets (or rather alleys, like those of a garden) were narrow and paved with small variously colored bricks forming every variety of ornamental figures. The houses, from the highest to the lowest class, exhibited not merely comfort but luxury, yet it was a selfish sort of luxury. The perpetually closed door and shut-up rooms of ceremony, the largest and most conspicuous of all in the house, gave an air of inhospitableness which, I should hope, was not indicative of the real character of the inhabitants. Yet it seemed to be a deserted village, a place of the dead rather than of the living, an ornamental graveyard. The liveliness of social beings was absent and was even inconsistent with the superlative neatness of all around us. It was a best parlor out-of-doors, where the gayety of frolicking children would derange the set order of the furniture, or an accidental touch of a sacrilegious foot might scratch the polish of a fresh-varnished fence, or flatten down the nap of the green carpet of grass, every blade of which is trained to grow exactly so.
"The grounds and gardens of a Mr. Vander Beck were, indeed, a curiosity from the strange mixture of the useful with the ridiculously ornamental. Here were the beautiful banks of a lake and Nature's embellishment of reeds and water plants, which, for a wonder, were left to grow in their native luxuriance, and in the midst a huge pasteboard or wooden swan, and a wooden mermaid of tasteless proportions blowing from a conchshell. In another part was a cottage with puppets the size of life moving by clock-work; a peasant smoking and turning a reel to wind off the thread which his 'goed vrow' is spinning upon a wheel, while a most sheep-like dog is made to open his mouth and to bark—a dog which is, doubtless, the progenitor of all the barking, toy-shop dogs of the world. Directly in the vicinity is a beautiful grapery, with the richest clusters of grapes literally covering the top, sides and walls of the greenhouse, which stands in the midst of a garden, gay with dahlias and amaranths and every variety of flowers, with delicious fruits thickly studding the well-trained trees. Everything, however, was cut up into miniature landscapes; little bridges and little temples adorned little canals and little mounds, miniature representations of streams and bills.
"We visited the residence of the burgomaster. He was away and his servants permitted us to see the house. It was cleaning-day. Everything in the house was in keeping with the character of the village. But the kitchen! how shall I describe it? The polished marble floor, the dressers with glass doors like a bookcase, to keep the least particle of dust from the bright-polished utensils of brass and copper. The varnished mahogany handle of the brass spigot, lest the moisture of the hand in turning it should soil its polish, and, will you believe it, the very pothooks as well as the cranes (for there were two), in the fireplace were as bright as your scissors!
"Broek is certainly a curiosity. It is unique, but the impression left upon me is not, on the whole, agreeable. I should not be contented to live there. It is too ridiculously and uncomfortably nice. Fancy a lady always dressed throughout the day in her best evening-party dress, and say if she could move about with that ease which she would like. Such, however, must be the feeling of the inhabitants of Broek; they must be in perpetual fear, not only of soiling or deranging their clothes merely, but their very streets every step they take. But good-bye to Broek. I would not have missed seeing it but do not care to see it again."
Holland, which he had never visited before, interested him greatly, but he could not help saying: "One feels in Holland like being in a ship, constantly liable to spring a leak."
Hamburg he found more to his taste:—
"September 26. Hamburg, you may remember, was nearly destroyed by fire in 1842. It is now almost rebuilt and in a most splendid style of architecture. I am much prepossessed in its favor. We have taken up our quarters at the Victoria Hotel, one of the splendid new hotels of the city. I find the season so far advanced in these northern regions that I am thinking of giving up my journey farther north. My matters in London will demand all my spare time."
"September 30. The windows of my hotel look out upon the Alster Basin, a beautiful sheet of water, three sides of which are surrounded with splendid houses. Boats and swans are gliding over the glassy surface, giving, with the well-dressed promenaders along the shores, an air of gayety and liveliness to the scene."
It will not be necessary to follow the traveller step by step during this visit to Europe. He did not go to Sweden and Russia, as he had at first planned, for he learned that the Emperor of Russia was in the South, and that nothing could be accomplished in his absence. He, therefore, returned to London from Hamburg. He was respectfully received everywhere and his invention was recognized as being one of great merit and simplicity, but it takes time for anything new to make its way. This is, perhaps, best summed up in the words of Charles T. Fleischmann, who at that time was agent of the United States Patent Office, and was travelling through Europe collecting information on agriculture, education, and the arts. He was a good friend of Morse's and an enthusiastic advocate of his invention. He carried with him a complete telegraphic outfit and lost no opportunity to bring it to the notice of the different governments visited by him, and his official position gave him the entree everywhere. Writing from Vienna on October 7, he says:—
"There is no doubt Morse's telegraph is the best of that description I have yet seen, but the difficulty of introducing it is in this circumstance, that every scientific man invents a similar thing and, without having the practical experience and practical arrangement which make Morse's so preferable, they will experiment a few miles' distance only, and no doubt it works; but, when they come to put it up at a great distance, then they will find that their experience is not sufficient, and must come back ultimately to Morse's plan. The Austrian Government is much occupied selecting out of many plans (of telegraphs) one for her railroads. I have offered Morse's and proposed experiments. I am determined to stay for some time, to give them a chance of making up their minds."