The Heidelberg Jubilee. III.

No one can speak or write a great deal about Germany without touching frequently upon the great subject of Beer. Beer is to the German what poetry is to the poet - the native language of his soul. No celebration of any kind is complete without it. No matter upon what solemn occasion a Teuton enters, no matter how exalted the emotions which flood his soul or how abstruse the speculations which engage his thoughts, he must be sustained throughout by constant communion with his froth-crowned schooner.

We need not say, therefore, that on such a joyous occasion as this quincentenary jubilee beer must needs flow like water. And the long trucks, heavily laden, innumerable, which rolled by my window in Untere Neckarstrasse on their way to the Festhalle bore, witness to this truth. But on last Friday evening all the glad bibulation culminated in one grand "Bier Kommers," in which all the members of the university participated. It was held in the great Fest Halle and was attended by from four to five thousand persons. At eight and a half o'clock the bout began; and the cock had crowed himself hoarse in welcoming full orbed day before it was ended. I have attended similar gatherings in Heidelberg before, but none which in magnitude and glory could be compared with this. Grave professors, gray-haired students of bygone times, guests, royal and otherwise, jaunty young corps students with their bright-colored caps throng impetuously into the hall. As is usual in a bier kommers, there is some preliminary attempt at literary exercises, either to ease the consciences of the revellers, or, what is more probable, to sweeten by contrast the subsequent carousal. There is some brief speech-making and bowing and toasting and responding by the Grand Duke, and introducing formality. But little by little the deck is cleared for action, and the men settle down to the serious business of the night. Now by the beard of Gambrinus, shall noble deeds be done. Let the hugest beer keg tremble - even the Great Tun in the castle cellar. For here is an unflinching army of veterans, every man a tested hero, bomb-proof against innumerable schooners. What, have we not here men grown gray in the service; men who in the flush of manhood have managed to dispose of sixty or seventy mugs of beer in a single evening, and who have therefore borne for a year the proud title of "Beer King" of Heidelberg? Tobacco, too, must claim its due share of our attention. This roof above us is high, the hall is vast, the space seems limitless. Is it possible for us to fill it all with tobacco smoke? Yea, verily: or ever the morrow's sun. shall rise this vast space shall be packed with dense smoke as with a tangible substance, so that from the flattest-sprawled student beneath a table to the stray bird that seeks an outlet from the highest pane above, each pair of lungs shall be laden with the all-pervading incense of the Indian weed. What can thousands of deter mined men, puffing ceaselessly at thousands of monumental pipes, not accomplish?

The hour of midnight strikes. The more illustrious and more sedate of the company steal quietly away to home and bed; but they are not missed. Songs are being roared out at the top of stentorian lungs. Most of the students are, of course, German; but there are enough from England, America, Switzerland, Egypt, yea and Japan, to give a cosmopolitan flavor to the gathering. "The Watch on the Rhine," "God Save the Queen," and "Hail Columbia" are all roared out together in amiable discord. Some student conceives the gay notion of beating time on the table with his beer mug. The happy idea is infectious; and a thousand mugs thump ponderously upon the deal boards. Then all begin to stamp in unison and smite the tables with their canes. Even this ear-splitting uproar does not do full justice to the enthusiasm of one group. So they leap upon their table, and thus elevated, stamping, smiting, clashing, pour forth their souls in song. We will not wait to see the last student roll under the table or stagger homeward in the gray dawn, but will withdraw to muse upon the scene.

Such is the German bier kommers at its best, astonishing to strangers, morally revolting to those reared under the influence of Puritanism and yet withal far less harmful than one could at first sight believe. Germans view it with indulgence and make no such serious matter of it as Americans assuredly would. I have no wish to defend it; but it is a permanent institution of the fatherland, and laughable or solemn, defensible or indefensible, it is worthy of inspection.

Saturday, the last day of the jubilee, dawned bright and clear. The programme devoted the daytime to "verschiedene Ausfluge," which might be translated "go-as-you-please jubilations." In the evening came the illumination of the castle and bridge, a sight well worth seeing. Long before dark the streets were thronged with eager multitudes hurrying to advantageous positions whence to view the spectacle. Perhaps the favorite place was on the Heiligenberg, the lofty hill across the Neckar, and there I took my stand in the garden of the Philosophenhoche. Gradually the daylight faded, and starless night came down. Heidelberg was only a confusion of twinkling lights, and on the vast black hill which loomed precipitously behind it there was nothing to mark the location of the castle. All was impenetrable gloom. The lights from the Fest Halle made long, narrow streaks of light across the dark, rushing Neckar lying far below. Thousands upon thousands of people were on every hand, waiting breathlessly for the spectacle; but none of them were visible in the darkness. Two rockets shot up ward as signals and then on a sudden, as by a single flash, the old castle burst into a glare of crimson fire. Green light appeared below it; but all else was utter gloom. It was a wonderful sight. Every nook and cranny of the great building was flooded with the fiery glow, as it stood out in unrelieved intensity from the black mountain side. Thus it must have looked when Tilly paused on the Terrace to look back at the glorious bon-fire he had kindled. The majestic ruin, majestic even in its downfall, bore in its glowing sides the marks of its history. Turenne's cannon have pounded these walls; the thunderbolt has smitten them again and again; French gunpowder has done its best to hurl those massive battlements skyward and has failed, though the Great Tower at the corner was blown up. The tooth of time has gnawed unceasingly, yet not all ungently, upon the ruin. From that gaping window Elizabeth of England looked out many a time; that octagon tower and the dungeons beneath it could tell strange tales, if they chose; kings and princes have supped and made merry in those halls, and many a tender vow has been plighted in the moonlight on that great stone promenade. But the crimson glory which shines, as their glory shone, is fading already, as their glory faded. The bridge is all ablaze with red light, and the air is full of hissing rockets and golden rain. But the light in the old castle is dying. One by one the rugged towers, the pillars and sculptures, the wide, desolate windows return, to the solemn, brooding darkness whence they so suddenly leapt. Decay and ruin can be replaced - never reinstated. Black night settles once more, and into it looms once more the shadowy mountain. The last red ray quivers for an instant in the Octagon Tower and then goes suddenly out, announcing to the world that the jubilee is ended, and Father Time must plod on another hundred years, until a century swings round once more and unborn thousands come to make these hills once more re-echo their festival joy.

A. M. CUMMINGS.