But our canoe is now getting back to civilization, and away from that pleasant simplicity where everything done in the streets or the hotel is strange to a stranger. Here we have composite candles and therefore no snuffers; here the waiter insists on speaking English, and sitting down by me, and clutching my arm, he confidentially informs me that there are no "bean green," translating "haricots verts," but that perhaps I might like a "flower caul," so we assent to a cauliflower.
This is funny enough, but far more amusing is it when the woman waiter of some inland German village shouts louder German to you, because that she rattles out at first is not understood. She gazes with a new sensation at a guest who actually cannot comprehend her voluble words, and then guest and waiter burst into laughter.
Here too I saw a boat towed along the Rhine--a painful evidence of being near commerce, even though it was in a primitive style; not that there was any towing-path, but men walked among the bushes, pulling the boat with a rope, and often wading to do so. This sight told me at once that I had left the fine free forests where you might land anywhere, and it was sure to be lonely and charming.
After a few bends westward we come in sight of the two towers of Bâle, but the setting sun makes it almost impossible to see anything in its brightness, so we must only paddle on.
The bridge at Bâle was speedily covered by the idle and the curious as the canoe pulled up at an hotel a few yards from the water on Sept. 14th.
It was here that the four-oared boat had arrived some weeks ago with its moist crew. The proprietor of the house was therefore much pleased to see another English boat come in, so little and so lonely, but still so comfortable and so dry. I walked about the town and entered a church (Protestant here of course), where a number of people had assembled at a baptism. The baby was fixed on a sort of frame, so as to be easily handed about from mother to father, and from clerk to minister; I hereby protest against this mechanical arrangement as a flagrant indignity to the little darling. I have a great respect for babies, sometimes a certain awe.
The instant the christening was done, a happy couple came forward to be married, an exceedingly clumsy dolt of a bridegroom and a fair bride, not very young, that is to say, about fifty-five years old. There were no bridesmaids or other perplexing appurtenances, and after the simple ceremony the couple just walked away, amid the titters of a numerous crowd of women. The bridegroom did not seem to know exactly what to do next. He walked before his wife, then behind her, and then on one side, but it did not somehow feel quite comfortable, so he assumed a sort of diagonal position, and kept nudging her on till they disappeared in some house. Altogether, I never saw a more unromantic commencement of married life, but there was this redeeming point, that they were not bored by that dread infliction--a marriage breakfast--the first meeting of two jealous sets of new relations, who are all expected to be made friends at once by eating when they are not hungry, and listening when there is nothing to say. But, come, it is not proper for me to criticise these mysteries, so let us go back to the inn.