nterest in the Rhine, so far as its banks were concerned.

It was a relief to turn from such grossness to its antithesis in the
shape of two American ladies who sat near us. They were
well-preserved, well-bred spinsters under forty. Everything about them
was dainty and exquisitely neat. I likened them in my mind to bowls of
dried rose-leaves--the freshness gone, the perfume left. Such was
their intense and intelligent interest in travel that, rather than
lose a timber-framed village or historic castle, a vineyard or
watch-tower, they abstained from lunch and picnicked lightly on deck
off tea and eggs and hoernchen. They knew the legends of the Rhine as
you and I know (or ought to know) our Prayer-Books. They had studied
the history of Germany, and mastered the intricacies alike of the
Thirty Years' War and of the Hohenzollern pedigree; and they talked
well, expressing their ideas in good Saxon words; at times, perhaps a
trifle pedantic, but never offensively so.

As the day wore on the temperature became almost overpowering. The
water reflected a blinding glare, and a heat like that of a burning
fiery furnace was radiated from the engines. I was wondering whether a
hammock in a cool English garden would not have been more desirable,
when I heard a plaintive, uneducated American voice behind me ask a
question of its mate which exactly embodied my own unuttered
sentiments:

"What _I_ want to know, Jake, is: Is this pleasure, or ain't it? Did
we come here to enjoy ourselves, or what?"

JAKE: "Wall, I guess you ain't used to travelling around, my dear, and
you don't understand it. Oh, yes" (with an obvious effort), "this is
real fust-class pleasure, this is!"

MRS. JAKE: "Wall, I'm darned! I'd as lief be in our store."

JAKE: "Sakes alive! You _do_ surprise me! Think what Keren-Happuch
Jones will say when you mention casual on your return something that
happened when you was sailing up the Rhine. She'll die of envy, she
will, and spite to think you've seen more'n her."

MRS. JAKE (cheered somewhat): "Wall, I reckon, Jake, there's summat in
that. Keren-Happuch don't like anyone to do what she don't do."

JAKE: "And then, my dear, think of your noo bonnet from Paris! That'll
be another pill for Keren-Happuch to swallow."

MRS. JAKE: "My! Yes! I don't think much of Europe, anyway, but I could
never have bought that bonnet in Baltimore. But, Jake, do look on the
map and tell me when we get to Heidelberg."

JAKE: "It