When I saw it, I felt satisfied. I said to B.:
"That's all right, old man; that's the sort of thing we need. That
is just the sized river I feel I can get myself clean in this
afternoon."
I have heard a good deal in praise of the Rhine, and I am glad to be
able to speak well of it myself. I found it most refreshing.
I was, however, sorry that we had washed 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.
