Villa Elsa | Page 5

would have a bracing, solidifying effect on a typically casual, slack American youth like Gard, whose latent capabilities were never likely to be fully called upon in the comparatively hit-and-miss organization of Yankee life.
For he had not yet begun to find himself. He had not even decided on a calling at an age when the German is almost a full-fledged citizen, shouldering all the accompanying obligations. Kirtley's exemplary conduct and the gravity cast over him by the death of his loved ones, had led him to think a little of Rebner's suggestions about the ministry. And for this, Luther's country would be expected to be sublime.
The loudly reiterated praise of Germany and the Germans had at last produced the desired effect on Gard. He was prevailed upon to break away from the old associations, go abroad for a year and get a fresh and stout hold on the future. Rebner, through his connections, had been able to arrange for a home in Saxony for his pupil's sojourn. It was in "a highly estimable and well-informed family" who had never taken a paying guest. Although a new experience for them, they had urgently insisted that they would do everything they could to make his stay agreeable and beneficial. This was deemed most lucky. For the real German character and existence could there be observed and lived with the best profit, uncontaminated by the intermixture of doubtful foreign associations.
And so Gard had arrived in Dresden, in whose attractive suburb of Loschwitz, on the gently rising banks of the Elbe, the worthy Buchers were domiciled. As his limping German did not give him confidence about the up-and-down variety of the Saxon dialect, he did not venture this afternoon to find his way by tram to the house. The blind German script in which his hosts' solicitous and minute instructions were couched, and the funny singsong of the natives talking blatantly about him, made him feel still more helpless. He sought refuge in an open droschke. He could then, too, enjoy the drive across the city.
The Saxon capital sits capaciously like a comfortable old dowager fully dressed in stuffs of a richly dull color. Her thick skirts are spread about her with a contented dignity which does not interfere with her eating large sandwiches openly and vigorously at the opera. To-day the mellow sunlight crowned her ancient nobleness with a becoming hue, as Gard was jogged along in a roundabout way through the city. Here at the left were the august bridges and great park, all famed in Napoleon's battles. Over there were the dowdy royal palaces. There, too, was the house of the sacred Sistine. Her sweet lineaments shone down in almost every American parlor Gard knew.
The dingy baroque architecture, whose general tastelessness was heavily banked up by a multitude of towers, gables and high copings, suggested an old-fashioned residential city of the days of urban fortifications. The uniform arrays of buildings, all pretending to the effect of sumptuousness thickened by weighty proportions and blasphemed by rococo hesitations and doubts, seemed constructed to exalt the doughty glory of Augustus the Strong--Dresden's local Thor, its chief heroic figure in the favorite Teuton galaxy of muscled Titans. Somber medieval squares, blocked away quaintly from the world, were relieved by the celebrated Brühl Terrace, enlivened by gilded statuary and by historic and literary memories.
Through all this metropolis of formidable and dun respectability curved the Elbe as if to round off the massive imitations of something better somewhere else. Hither coursed the smooth brown stream from Bohemia, not far away, through the high fastnesses of the Erz range and the groomed vistas of Saxon Switzerland, and past the frowning old fortress of K?nigstein, towering near a thousand feet above its untroubled bosom. Kirtley was to find the river, with its carefully tended shores, a companion in many an hour.
CHAPTER IV
VILLA ELSA
Such in brief was the scene that stretched out around him and enveloped his attention and interest. There was not majesty that would offend, but rather a cosy formality that is the absence of style. It cured somewhat the homesick inclinations that quite naturally haunted him after a wearying day of travel and as nightfall drew down about his loneliness. He was bound for the home of a strange family, speaking a tongue in which he was far from glib. It had been written, though, that the Bucher young people had learned English pretty well at school.
Kirtley reached his destination to find that the parents were waiting expectantly to receive him. With German consciousness, they were stuffily attired for this novel and important event. After staunch greetings he was led into the house past a big angry dog that stood guard tempestuously at the door. Gard found later that such savage barking was quite a feature of