l, live,
native-born American. They overwhelmed me with questions about the state
of our country, its government, etc. The hostess brought me a supper of
fried eggs and _wurst_, while they gathered around the table and began a
real category in the dialect of the country, which is difficult to
understand. I gave them the best information I could about our mode of
farming, the different kinds of produce raised, and the prices paid to
laborers; one honest old man cried out, on my saying I had worked on a
farm, "Ah! little brother, give me your hand!" which he shook most
heartily. I told them also something about our government, and the
militia system, so different from the conscription of Europe, when a
farmer becoming quite warm in our favor, said to the others with an air
of the greatest decision: "One American is better than twenty Germans!"
What particularly amused me, was, that although I spoke German with
them, they seemed to think I did not understand what they said among
one another, and therefore commented very freely over my appearance. I
suppose they had the idea that we were a rude, savage race, for I
overheard one say: "One sees, nevertheless, that he has been educated!"
Their honest, unsophisticated mode of expression was very interesting to
me, and we talked together till a late hour.

My friend arrived at three o'clock the next morning, and after two or
three hours' talk about _home_, and the friends whom he expected to see
so much sooner than I, a young farmer drove me in his wagon to
Offenburg, a small city at the foot of the Black Forest, where I took
the cars for Freiburg. The scenery between the two places is grand. The
broad mountains of the Black Forest rear their fronts on the east, and
the blue lines of the French Vosges meet the clouds on the west. The
night before, in walking over the plain, I saw distinctly the whole of
the Strasbourg Minster, whose spire is the highest in Europe, being four
hundred and ninety feet, or but twenty-five feet lower than the Pyramid
of Cheops.

I visited the Minster of Freiburg yesterday morning. It is a grand,
gloomy old pile, dating from the eleventh century--one of the few Gothic
churches in Germany that have ever been completed. The tower of
beautiful fretwork, rises to the height of three hundred and ninety-five
feet, and the body of the church including the choir, is of the same
length. The interior is solemn and majestic. Windows stained in colors
that burn