he rare moments when the
rain forgot itself. The place was better shaded than need be in that
sunless land by the German elms that look like ours and it was
sufficiently stocked with German statues, that look like no others. It
had a monument, too, of the sort with which German art has everywhere
disfigured the kindly fatherland since the war with France. These
monuments, though they are so very ugly, have a sort of pathos as records
of the only war in which Germany unaided has triumphed against a foreign
foe, but they are as tiresome as all such memorial pomps must be. It is
not for the victories of a people that any other people can care. The
wars come and go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad wars, or
what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in death and
sorrow, and their fame is an offence to all men not concerned in them,
till time has softened it to a memory

"Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago."

It was for some such reason that while the Marches turned with instant
satiety from the swelling and strutting sculpture which celebrated the
Leipsic heroes of the war of 1870, they had heart for those of the war of
1813; and after their noonday dinner they drove willingly, in a pause of
the rain, out between yellowing harvests of wheat and oats to the field
where Napoleon was beaten by the Russians, Austrians and Prussians (it
always took at least three nations to beat the little wretch) fourscore
years before. Yet even there Mrs. March was really more concerned for the
sparsity of corn-flowers in the grain, which in their modern character of
Kaiserblumen she found strangely absent from their loyal function; and
March was more taken with the notion of the little gardens which his
guide told him the citizens could have in the suburbs of Leipsic and
enjoy at any trolley-car distance from their homes. He saw certain of
these gardens in groups, divided by low, unenvious fences, and sometimes
furnished with summer-houses, where the tenant could take his pleasure in
the evening air, with his family. The guide said he had such a garden
himself, at a rent of seven dollars a year, where he raised vegetables
and flowers, and spent his peaceful leisure; and March fancied that on
the simple domestic side of their life, which this fact gave him a
glimpse of, the Germans were much more engaging than in their character
of victors over either the First or the Third Napoleon. But pro