Skip to Content
Indiana University

Search Options




View Options

[Hide Table of Contents]
An American family in Germany. Browne, J. Ross (1821–1875).
Requires cookie*[Print]
no previous
next
page: (TitlePage) [View Page (TitlePage) ]

AN AMERICAN FAMILY IN GERMANY.

BY

J. ROSS BROWNE,

AUTHOR OF "YUSEF," "CRUSOE'S ISLAND," "THE LAND OF THOR," ETC.Illustrated by the Author.

NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1866.
page: Advertisement (Table of Contents) [View Page Advertisement (Table of Contents) ]

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

BY J. ROSS BROWNE.

  • AN AMERICAN FAMILY IN GERMANY. Illustrated by the Author. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00.
  • THE LAND OF THOR. Illustrated by the Author. (In Press.)
  • CRUSOE'S ISLAND: A Ramble in the Footsteps of Alexander Selkirk. With Sketches of Adventure in California and Washoe. Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75.
  • YUSEF; or, The Journey of the Frangi. A Crusade in the East. With Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY IN GERMANY.

A WHIRL THROUGH ALGERIA.

A VISIT TO THE SALT-MINES OF WIELICZKA.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

AN AMERICAN FAMILY IN GERMANY.

  • The long Bill. 17
  • Chimney-sweep. 23
  • The young Idea. 29
  • Garden Scene. 31
  • Engaged. 36
  • Ach, du bist so Schön. 38
  • Father, Son, and Mother. 39
  • The Promenade. 46
  • "Willkommen!" 52
  • Mother's Birthday. 57
  • Schoolmaster's Pay-day. 65
  • Der Gemuthliche. 101
  • Nicholas. 176
  • The Christmas-tree. 184
  • The old Sea-king. 188
  • Mitché not crying. 190
  • Mitché crying. 190
  • Mitché skating. 192
  • Mitché in the beautiful Boat. 193
  • Little Mitché out of the beautiful Boat. 194
  • Mitché with Wings. 195
  • Mitché defying the mad Bull. 197
  • Mitché and the big Stone. 197
  • Mitché lives to fight another Day. 198
  • Mitché is tossed over the Fence. 199
  • The old Sea-king in Repose. 200
  • Mitché in Uniform. 202
  • Mitché on the Pony. 203
  • Little Mitché going to eat his Christmas Dinner. 205
  • Sudden Disappearance of Mitché's Chair. 205
  • Little Mitché has lost his Pudding. 207
  • Little Mitché studies his Lessons. 211
  • Street Musicians. 215
  • page: viii (List of Illustrations) -ix[View Page viii (List of Illustrations) -ix]
  • Village Festival. 217
  • Peasant Family going Home. 218
  • A Climax on Ice. 224
  • Falling in Love. 226
  • Letters from America. 231

A VISIT TO THE SALT-MINES OF WIELICZKA.

  • Polish national Costumes. 332
  • The Passport Bureau. 335
  • Kosciusko. 340
  • View of Cracow. 342
  • Gateway Shrine, Cracow. 344
  • Church of St. Mary, Cracow. 345
  • Polish Jews. 347
  • Polish Jew of Rank. 347
  • Outer Wall, Cracow. 351
  • Inspector of Workmen. 353
  • Author in Costume. 355
  • The Shaft. 356
  • Descending the Shaft. 359
  • Lamp-carriers. 362
  • Getting out Salt. 364
  • The Lablache of the Mines. 367
  • Salt Columns. 368
  • Foot-path. 370
  • Glück-auf. 373
  • Subterranean Stables. 375
  • Fête in the Grand Hall in the Salt-mine. 377
  • The old Commissioner. 380

INTRODUCTORY.

To my friend, Professor Schlafmütze, of California:

DURING the many pleasant years of our acquaintance, my dear Professor, I have had repeated proofs of your excellent judgment in literary matters. I have never known you to open your mouth except as a chimney for your meerschaum. I have rarely seen you smile, and am certain your worst enemy can not justly accuse you of a laugh. Your most scathing criticism has been a sigh, your most cordial eulogium a gentle nod of the head. Under these circumstances, having profound confidence in your critical acumen, I submitted these sketches to your perusal, with the request that you would tell me candidly what you thought I ought to do with them. When, after six months of unbroken silence, I received your note, written upon a scrap of coarse sugar-paper, inclosing the MS., and expressing the opinion that I would best subserve my own interests, as well as those of humanity, by putting them in a pigeonhole and preserving them for the use of future generations, I must admit, my dear Professor, that my confidence in your judgment was greatly shaken. You object to them on the ground that they only catch at what is visible to the eye; in other words, that they do not penetrate the surface and strike at the inner life.

Now, do you know, I think the invention of modern times called "inner life" is a wonderful piece of nonsense. Every live person, to be sure, has an inside page: x-xi[View Page x-xi] side, and his life must be somewhere within the bounds of his cuticle; but how, in the name of sense, can a man get at it without making use of one or the other of his five senses. You naturally judge that a person is lame when you see him limp on a crooked leg, and reasonably conclude that he is drunk if you see him stagger on a pair of straight legs. I see no necessity for going into the mysteries of transcendentalism to get at these palpable facts. But, you say, that's not the thing; all that is visible to the vulgar eye—Probe the inner man, sir—probe the inner man, and root out great original truths that will be a benefit to society. Upon my conscience, Professor, I don't know any other way of accomplishing this feat than by running a surgical instrument into his body, or, for shortness, cutting him up at once. What then? Why, doubtless, he has a pair of lungs, a heart, a liver, and some lights, all of which have already been admirably described in Wistar's Anatomy. I don't think much remains to be said on the subject in the way of anatomical description; certainly nothing within range of my surgical researches. Appearances are deceitful, you say; if one merely describes what he sees and what casually happens around him, the truth may still be far off. You must grasp at the soul—the great primary element—in other words, the "inner life" of your subject. Well, I am willing to go so far in that direction as to admit, with Laman Blanchard, that you can't tell the quality of a horse by looking at the padlock on the stable door; but if you see a tree, there is no good reason that I am aware of why you should hazard the conjecture that it may be a cabbage-plant, merely because it looks like a tree. So far from appearances being deceiful deceitful , they generally present the only tangible means of getting at the truth. If you catch a suspicious-looking fellow with his hand in your pocket, it is not absolutely impossible that he may be trying to lend you five dollars without your knowledge; but, unless there is strong proof of his honesty, you would be very likely to hand him over to the police on the presumption that he is a pickpocket. It matters very little about his motives, or the internal operations of his mind. Even if he be a man of remarkable integrity, he takes a very unusual method of showing it. When one travels in Africa and meets negroes, he is apt to set it down that negroes are men of dark complexion; so likewise, if the voyager visits the Fejee Islands and sees the natives feast on human flesh, he reasonably concludes that they are cannibals. Under your system of "inner life" it would convey an erroneous impression to state these facts. You tell me I must penetrate the surface—plunge into the spiritual operations and essences; in other words, try to get hold of something that you don't understand, and never will, and could not make other people understand if you did. Why, my dear friend, old Will Shakspeare, a writer of considerable genius, made his very best characters out of flesh and blood, and set them to walking upon the stage with the most palpable and indelible marks of reality upon them. What would you think of a lean Falstaff or a fat Hamlet? Do you suppose Othello would be improved by having his skin washed white? To be sure, every fat man is not Falstaff, nor every lean man Hamlet, nor every dark man Othello; but the passions are delineated through the physical and outward agencies, without which they would be mere airy abstractions. "The apparel oft proclaims the man," saith Polonius. Aye, and though you may see a lion in sheep's clothing, you would not be apt to say that a flock of sheep may be a flock of lions.
page: xii-xiii[View Page xii-xiii]

If you can not judge of a people by their personal appearance, their houses, their furniture, their costume, their outward habits of life, their conversation, their laws and customs, so far as all these things are appreciable through the senses, in the name of reason how are you to get at them all? how is one race ever to be distinguished from another? It would be absurd to say that Lavater never touched the inner life because he formed his conclusions from the physiognomy. Every man is a Lavater in his degree, either by intuition or by the education of experience. Some may draw wrong conclusions from correct premises, but that does not impair the doctrine of material influences. We know nothing, can comprehend nothing, save what reaches us through divine revelation or through our senses. Jeffrey goes so far as to contend that even the sentiment or emotion of Beauty is an analytical process of the mind based upon the material uses of the object, and its adaptation to purposes of human life.

What difference does it make, after all, so long as we are happy? You don't expect a racer to pull like a dray-horse, or a swallow to fly like an eagle. You don't look for the tenderness of Lamb in the solidity of Bacon, or the wisdom of Nestor in the frolics of Puck. Take things as you find them, good friend. If I put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes, be satisfied that somebody else is boring into it. Every man according to his specialty. Find fault with no man, provided he does what he undertakes to do. Let Mons. Berger play billiards, but don't expect him to play the statesman or the philosopher at the same time. Let Morphy play chess and Rarey tame horses, but don't find fault with them that they can't beat Billy Birch in the line of negro character, or write poetry like Tupper. Let our legislators make speeches, but don't expect them to keep within the bounds of reason or common sense. On the same principle, allow a poor fellow who dashes off currente calamo his impressions of men and things in foreign lands, to do so without expecting him to be a Lock upon the human understanding.

In such random sketches as these, it would scarcely be reasonable to expect much depth of observation or accuracy of description. I do not make any pretensions to the character of a serious traveler whose business it is to enlighten the world. It is my misfortune to possess an innate repugnance to hard labor of all kinds; and as for valuable facts and useful information, my proclivities in that line were thoroughly eradicated by long experience in the government service, where both facts and information, as I very soon discovered, were regarded as irrelevant and impertinent in official correspondence.

There is a consciousness of shallowness betrayed in these excuses, I admit, but then it is at least honest when you offer a man a copper—the best you can do for him, perhaps—to assure him that it is not a ten-dollar piece. Any common fellow can pass himself for what he is not. It requires a high order of moral courage to pass ourselves for what we are. Upon this principle I have here given my experiences of life and character, warning you that they were picked up in a reckless, harum-scarum way, as the vagabond who lies down in a haystack or a stubble-field to pass the night, picks up the husks, burrs, and seeds that happen to stick to his coat.

Starting from Frankfort-on-the-Main, and returning to the same place, I expended on all my travels through Spain, Algeria, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland—embracing five different tours, performed at different times, and occupying an aggregate page: xiv-15[View Page xiv-15] of nine months—exactly $675: not more than many an enterprising gentleman contrives to get rid of during a brief season of relaxation at Newport or Saratoga.

Considering the expenses of living and traveling in those countries, the extortions of guides and public officers, the innumerable extras that are constantly springing up, like many-headed dragons ever ready to devour one, and the great distance traversed by land and sea, this does not seem an extravagant basis of operations. You should consider, my dear Professor, that, like the Frenchman, I have to make the soup of a brickbat, the bread of sawdust, the fricassee of horseflesh or bull-frogs, and the ragout of the nearest cat. When one travels third class by railway, and deck passages and second class by steamer, sleeps in sheetless beds, takes random snacks with organ-grinders, couriers, and boot-blacks, and considers himself guilty of an extraordinary piece of extravagance if he pays two cents for a cigar or ten cents for a stand-up at one of the opera-houses, it is unreasonable to expect his style to be very classical or his researches very profound.

Hence, with great respect for your views on this and all other subjects, I can not but flatter myself with the belief that the public will be more indulgent to my shortcomings than you have been, and will accord to me the merit of having accomplished something. No great harm can be done, at all events, by the publication of this disjointed record of my wanderings, and some good, perhaps, if it makes a single reader forget for the time
  • "The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
  • The insolence of office, and the spurns
  • That patient merit of the unworthy takes."

J. R. B.

no previous
next