The story of the death of Admiral Makaroff on April 13, with the loss of his flag-ship, the Petropavlovsk, and some six hundred of his men, is known to our readers. Vice-Admiral Stephan Osipovich Makaroff, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian naval forces in the Far East, was a man of a bold and vigorous personality, and after his arrival at Port Arthur the Russian vessels repeatedly acted on the aggressive. Admiral Makaroff had been in active service for forty years or more, and his many promotions were usually the reward of achievements of distinction. In the Russo-Turkish War he was in command of a cruiser, and with it carried out some remarkable and audacious attacks on Turkish ports. In reward he was not only promoted, but was personally honored by the Czar, and received from him the order of St. Vladimir. Before his promotion to supreme naval command in the East, Admiral Makaroff was military governor of Kronstadt. RUINS OF BISCHOFSTEIN CASTLE Τ By Paul van Dyke HE first time I saw the waters of the Moselle, vacation and my purse were all but finished, and the call of science was so strongly aided by the spur of poverty that I went on toward the stuffy lecture-rooms of Berlin with only a lingering glance at the hills through whose gates the swift stream poured. But the glance enriched life with a pleasant anticipation. And it was almost a matter of regret to find myself, years later, at the head of the little valley of the Nahe, seated beside a good comrade in the railway carriage which was to carry me across to the watershed of the Moselle. Could any stream slip as softly beneath the crags, or any vine-clad hills curve as gracefully to the rippled edge of the current as those whose beauty had smoothed the wrinkles of my mind in a hundred fleeting dreams of day and night? Was it not a mistake to exchange the pleasant anticipations in the hand for a disappointing reality in the bush? And yet, I said to myself, reassuringly, it is a foolish scruple, for, after all, we can always trust the tact of memory to save for us even the most impossible situations. For instance, there was that mistaken trip across the south German plain at the end of a nine weeks' drought, with blazing heat, withered foliage, choking dust, morose peasants, dirty inns, and the grim horns of the dilemma-stewed veal or roast pork-driving us nearer to dyspepsia every day. When a year had passed, nothing but the most torturing cross-examination could induce memory to recall anything about it but the full moon floating up through the sunset haze above the circle of little hills, the beating of flails under the timbered roofs of old barns, the sound of laughter and singing floated out through great doors on the odors of the hop vines the children were stripping. After all, it is the man who is afraid to realize his anticipations who comes at last to the humor that cares for neither memory nor hope. It required such philosophy as we had been able to accumulate in the train to face the manufacturing town at which we left it. Saarbrücken seemed to consist entirely of suburbs made of jerry-built workmen's houses in a particularly dirty shade of stucco. It closely joins a string of tiny towns of the same kind, and the short stretches between them are shadowed by disgust and a cloud of coal smoke which wipes the beauty out of even the lush meadows stretching from the road to the ridge whose base is smeared by the dingy waters of the little Saar. It was one of those rides when a bicycle becomes almost a thing of beauty. A wheel is no more apt for a picture than a silk hat, and that shy spirit, romance, picks up her skirts and flies with a little scream of disgust at the very word. But the prosaic thing means for the sentimental traveler escape from the railroad, and a flying foot through dull stretches. In an hour and a half we dismounted, fifteen miles off, at Saarlouis, with no more ill humor than could be cleared away by a good supper at the "Three Hares" and a hot discussion with the landlord and his guests over Alsace and Lorraine. After breakfast, the pleasure of rapid motion and a brisk morning air made a dull road seem short, and we were surprised when we reached Metzlar. There are travelers who look on all manufacturing towns as an abomination of desolation, but only the eyes that will not see can fail to notice an occasional one with an air of distinction. And so long as men must use fire more and more in order to live at all on the crowded earth, it is pleasant to know that the choice between the cities of the Philistines and a hermitage in the wilderness is not forced upon us. There is no need to stain all the blue sky or foul all the clear waters of the world of cities. Dirty and sprawling Saarbrücken and its neighbors had greed and slovenly recklessness stamped like the motto of a coat of arms on every corner. Trim little Metzlar, with the grass in front of its great pottery, the flowers in the yards of the small whitewashed houses, the children playing on the school-house green, and the spire of the church pointing up toward the sun, told of a people who knew that cleanliness was next to godliness, and got the most out of life by not trying to get too much. At Metzlar the creeping Saar, which above avoids the road as if a little ashamed of its dirt, grows bright like the face of one who by patient, clean living has left an ugly past behind; and, just below the town, runs into a narrow gorge, where it brawls pleasantly along over a stony bed. But here the road, so long avoided, gives the river no more chance of company, and turns back on to the hills to cut off the long loop of ravine. We looked wistfully at the river which we must leave just when it was beginning to be a jolly comrade, and thought of Pascal's "rivers are moving roads which carry us wherever we wish." How well it would be for the traveler to have Fortunatus's cap! Not that he would wish himself at once at his destination. It is hard to imagine anything that would make traveling or living more uninteresting. We need to arrive, because it is dull traveling when we are not going anywhere; but life is a pilgrimage, and its best pleasures are of the road. To miss the road with its ups and downs and weariness would be to miss it all. But though the wise man would not care to miss the going, it would be pleasant to choose the way sometimes. To step into a canoe and be carried, paddle in hand and eyes watching the center ripple down into the rocks and pines of this lonely gorge, and then out again, miles below, among the gentle fields and woods and villages on the other slope of the ridge, certainly seemed attractive. But the ways we have not taken may have had more dangers and less pleasures than we imagine, and perhaps, after all, we got the best of it, though we did push our wheels for miles up the long, hot curves of the hill road to find ourselves at sunset riding into Treves, which lies on the Moselle just below the mouth of the Saar. Our little inn, which stood at the crossing of two narrow cobblestone streets, bore a strangely inappropriate title. When we looked at the list of the Treves hotels the night before, these words stood out from the pages of the guide-book: “Stadt Venedig-anerkannte gute Küche." We affected as we rode into the city to leave the choice of an inn to chance, but if the "City of Venice" had been Sindbad's island of magnetic rock which pulled the nails out of all the ships, it could not have drawn our bicycles more irresistibly to its faded portals. We sat down to dinner with a large company, whose appearance "said as plain as whisper in the ear," Commercial Traveler. Their mere pres ence allayed the haunting fear lest the cook had died in the three years since that guide-book was printed. In front of each man stood a tall, thin bottle, and he was talking about it with a preternatural gravity and tenacity that gave to the converse the air of some sacred rite necessary before libation. We should not have found it strange, for in the valley of the Moselle, which lives by wine, this sort of talk flows on forever. One chief ornament of the city museum is a monument dating from the time when the Romans were building Treves for their northern capital. It shows a barge filled with wine-casks, and the faces of the steersman and rowers all bear the same expression of preternatural gravity that we saw among the diners at the Stadt Venedig. You may observe it on the faces of the men on the porch of any American country tavern when they are talking about horses or cigars. At the third course Fidus Achates said, with a sigh, "What a beautiful place for Silas Bascom of Maine! He took after both his parents, and one et a great deal and the other et a great while." There were seven courses at luncheon for thirty-seven and a half cents, and eleven at dinner for sixty-two and a half cents. Therefore we forgot the road and lingered at Capua. Treves, which apparently has just about enough to do to keep it content with leisure, bears with a smile a load of archæological memories which might crush a busier or less cheerful city. To see successively the Roman Gate, the Palace of the Cæsars, the Baths, the Basilica, a Museum full of Roman antiquities, and some half a dozen churches, was to become oppressed with a deep and shameful sense of ignorance, and I asked a bookseller if he had anything which might help me. So the Alpine traveler starts an avalanche by an incautious word. He began bringing books by the armful, climbing ladders to all his topmost shelves, and answering every protest by assurances of his pleasure in serving a tourist with a mind above mere guide-books and cheap souvenirs. Then, peering over the top of a huge pile of volumes, he began to point out their merits. It was a dreadful fate to be thus tied to the stake of compliment and overwhelmed by the rising tide of learning, so I carefully explained that in taking the smallest volume I showed my love of information by paying for it at the very highest rate per page, and, before he could recover, completed my escape. After it was carefully packed on the bicycle, the book diffused a general sense of being well informed which was worth far more than it cost. It was afternoon when we rode out of the massive gateway that gives dignity to the little city, because, like an ancient title, it suggests a great past; and in an hour we were at the ferry. Why is it so pleasant to cross a rope ferry? It may be that the strong, clumsy scow, with its rough timbers and planks, suggests subtle memories, primitive and good, of hay-ricks and barn floors and a supper of bread and milk. Perhaps the charm is the sense of triumph at forcing the stream to lead you to the very bank it would keep you from; or it may be only the gentleness of gliding motion. Whatever the reason, we sat on the thwart and heard the water lapping under our feet in idle contentment and a vague expectation of meeting something strange and pleasant on the other |