ed in it afterwards. I have heard
from friends who have travelled since in Germany that we completely
spoiled that river for the rest of the season. Not for business
purposes, I do not mean. The barge traffic has been, comparatively
speaking, uninterfered with. But the tourist trade has suffered
terribly. Parties who usually go up the Rhine by steamer have, after
looking at the river, gone by train this year. The boat agents have
tried to persuade them that the Rhine is always that colour: that it gets
like that owing to the dirt and refuse washed down into it during its
course among the mountains.

But the tourists have refused to accept this explanation. They have
said:

"No. Mountains will account for a good deal, we admit, but not for all
_that_. We are acquainted with the ordinary condition of the Rhine, and
although muddy, and at times unpleasant, it is passable. As it is this
summer, however, we would prefer not to travel upon it. We will wait
until after next year's spring-floods."

We went to bed after our wash. To the _blase_ English bed-goer,
accustomed all his life to the same old hackneyed style of bed night
after night, there is something very pleasantly piquant about the
experience of trying to sleep in a German bed. He does not know it is a
bed at first. He thinks that someone has been going round the room,
collecting all the sacks and cushions and antimacassars and such articles
that he has happened to find about, and has piled them up on a wooden
tray ready for moving. He rings for the chambermaid, and explains to her
that she has shown him into the wrong room. He wanted a bedroom.

She says: "This _is_ a bedroom."

He says: "Where's the bed?"

"There!" she says, pointing to the box on which the sacks and
antimacassars and cushions lie piled.

"That!" he cries. "How am I going to sleep in that?"

The chambermaid does not know how he is going to sleep there, never
having seen a gentleman go to sleep anywhere, and not knowing how they
set about it; but suggests that he might try lying down flat, and
shutting his eyes.

"But it is not long enough," he says.

The chambermaid thinks he will be able to manage, if he tucks his legs
up.

He sees that he will not get anything better, and that he must put up
with it.

"Oh, very well!" he says. "Look sharp and get it made, then."

She says: "It is made."

He turns and regards the girl sternly. Is she taking advantage of his