We are very pleasantly situated here.  My friends, who arrived a day before me, hired three rooms (with the assistance of a courier) in a large house on the banks of the Neckar.  We pay for them, with attendance, thirty florins—­about twelve dollars—­a month, and Frau Dr. Grosch, our polite and talkative landlady, gives us a student’s breakfast—­coffee and biscuit—­for about seven cents apiece.  We are often much amused to hear her endeavors to make us understand.  As if to convey her meaning plainer, she raises both thumbs and forefingers to her mouth and pulls out the words like a long string; her tongue goes so fast that it keeps my mind always on a painful stretch to comprehend an idea here and there.  Dr. S——­, from whom we take lessons in German, has kindly consented to our dining with his family for the sake of practice in speaking.  We have taken several long walks with them along the banks of the Neckar, but I should be puzzled to repeat any of the conversations that took place.  The language, however, is fast growing more familiar, since women are the principal teachers.

Opposite my window rises the Heiligenberg, on the other side of the Neckar.  The lower part of it is rich with vineyards, and many cottages stand embosomed in shrubbery among them.  Sometimes we see groups of maidens standing under the grape arbors, and every morning the peasant women go toiling up the steep paths with baskets on their heads, to labor among the vines.  On the Neckar below us, the fishermen glide about in their boats, sink their square nets fastened to a long pole, and haul them up with the glittering fish, of which the stream is full.  I often lean out of the window late at night, when the mountains above are wrapped in dusky obscurity, and listen to the low, musical ripple of the river.  It tells to my excited fancy a knightly legend of the old German time.  Then comes the bell, rung for closing the inns, breaking the spell with its deep clang, which vibrates far away on the night air, till it has roused all the echoes of the Odenwald.  I then shut the window, turn into the narrow box which the Germans call a bed, and in a few minutes am wandering in America.  Half way up the Heiligenberg runs a beautiful walk, dividing the vineyards from the forest above.  This is called the Philosopher’s Way, because it was the favorite ramble of the old Professors of the University.  It can be reached by a toilsome, winding path among the vines, called the Snake-way, and when one has ascended to it he is well rewarded by the lovely view.  In the evening, when the sun has got behind the mountain, it is delightful to sit on the stone steps and watch the golden light creeping up the side of the Kaiser-stuhl, till at last twilight begins to darken in the valley and a mantle of mist gathers above the Neckar.