We saw an enormous fire-place in the kitchen, without any chimney. The smoke simply ascended, or tried to ascend, through a pyramid of boards. The room was too much for us. “Don’t the smoke hurt your eyes terribly?” said my wife to the girl’s mother, as she wiped the tears away and tried to get her breath. “Oh! yes,” answered the good woman, “it’s terrible on the eyes, but just splendid for smoking hams.” At many places along the country roads, we passed children with baskets, gathering the manure up from the highways. This they carry into their father’s fields. But every twig, stick or stone that can deface a white smooth road, is gathered up and taken away. Each farmer, for certain fixed distances along the highway, is a “care taker” of the road, and his little income from his farm is increased by a small allowance from the public treasury. In the vicinity of Friberg, with its wonderful waterfalls and green mountains, we see as beautiful scenery as the heart could wish. Little of the Black Forest life or scenery is even guessed at by a traveler on the train. The characteristic things of continental life in general are no longer on the routes of public travel. CHAPTER XXI 1879 BRET HARTE--LETTERS FROM HIM--VISITS US--STAY AT BOCKEN-- CONVERSATIONS--MRS. SENATOR SHERMAN--EVENINGS AT BOCKEN--WE ALL GO TO THE RIGI--HOW WE GOT THE “PRINCE’S” ROOMS--HARTE GOES WITH US TO OBSTALDEN IN THE ALPS--VERY SIMPLE LIFE--A STRANGE FUNERAL--HARTE FINDS HIS STORIES IN A VILLAGE INN-- MORE LETTERS--WE VISIT THE MOSELLE RIVER--FINER THAN THE RHINE--A WONDERFUL CASTLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES--ALL FURNISHED AND FRESH AS WHEN NEW--THE FRENCH DID NOT FIND IT WHEN THEY WERE DEMOLISHING GERMAN CASTLES--AN EXQUISITE GOTHIC CHURCH FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OLD--WONDERFUL ROMAN RUINS AT TREVES--MORE LETTERS FROM BRET HARTE--A HAPPY MAN. _May 30._--One day I was wandering quite alone in the Jura Mountains. I had little with me save my umbrella, my overcoat, and a pocket copy of Bret Harte’s poems. When I rested, here and there, under a tree at the roadside, I read the poems--all of them; but “John Burns of Gettysburg,” “Dickens in Camp,” “The Reveille” and “Her Letter,” I read often, and felt them to be the rarest verses any American had ever written. His “Heathen Chinee” had given him fame, while these other great things were but little known. I believe I had never asked a man for an autograph in my life, but I did want Bret Harte’s own name at the foot of “Burns of Gettysburg;” for I had read it with a thrill, and with tears. I sent him the very same little book I had carried around with me. He returned the copy with these words written on the margin: “Phrases such as camps may teach, Sabre cuts of Saxon speech.” He also wrote me. He was now U. S. Consul at Crefeld, near the lower Rhine. “UNITED STATES CONSULATE, CREFELD, May 28, 1879.