The Opelousas courier., 1886-02-13
In THE ALTMARKT.
BY MARY N. PRESCOTT.

friend Frau Schilling in Dresden" she
said. 'tShe wants me to find her a com.
panion in America who can sing a little
Could anything be more fortunate? ]
; propose to send you, Violet"
"You are very kind to think of me.
! But in order to go, | shall be obliged tc
use all the money | have put aside for q
rainy day."
"But it is not exactly fair weather now,
is it? Besides, it will be capital well in,
vested. You will see the world, you
will learn German, and you will forget
Mr.. Dabney, and perhaps marry a Ger
man baron" -
II don't want to marry a German bar
on, but think / will go, thank you"
And the next outward bound German
steamer carried her to Hamburg. Not
knowing q syllable of the German tongue,
she engaged a young German ~womanwho
was returning home'to travel with her to
Dresden, where Frau Schilling met. her.
She found her situation no sinecure, to be
sure. Frau Schilling's English was so
broken as to be almost beyond repair.
Once, Oh twice Violet went out with her
to afternoon tea, where she sat like a
Statue, trying with all her might to grasp
the thread of conversation in vain the
loneliness of a stranger in a foreign land,
unable to speak the language, possessed
her. It sometimes seemed to her that she
should die unless she could find some
body to whom she could rehearse her
thoughts and trials in good terse English.
Frau Schilling lived in the eastern part of
the city, in a street leading out of Durer-
strasse. Although it was remote from
che central market places and the shops,
and from almost everything, it made up
for this inconvenience in being cheap,
but Frau Schilling convinced everybody
that she lived there for the pure air and
the view. Of course the tramway ran
near, on its way to Blasewiltz, but Frau
Schilling and her companion always
walked when they went QUIT was so
much healthier. Violet had been to the
Royal Gallery and the Altmarkt but once,
in the convey of Frau Schilling, when
one afternoon, after she had been a fort
night in the city, it occurred to her to
walk out alone, and make acquaintance
with4the place. 1t was quite late in the
day, however, before she got started, and
the sky was already adeep s~afffron-color
in the west. She remembered that Frau
Schilling had conducted her down Du-
rerstrasse, past Holbeinplatz, through the
narrow little Zeigelstrasse, pausing to.
look at the old Saxon monument at the
corner of the Botanical Garden, where
Death, with his hour-glass, stands like a
shadow behind the warrior. Thestream
of passers scarcely observed her as she
loitered upon the Terrace of Brnhl, and
stopped to count the spires in the Neus-
tadt; a band was playing in the Belvedere
some homesick strain that persued her as
she went on toward the gilded groups of
statuary that adorn the hghtsof steps
giving upon the schlossplatz.
The sunset light was upon everything;
a steamer was towing a fleet Of barges up
the river the hills across the Elbe looked
blue and enchanting in the distance: but
it all made her feel more alone and bereft.
It was a fair, a great world; but what
did it signify to her now that John Dab
ney had forgotten herr She crossed the
Platz and went slowly up Schlosstrasse
and into the Altmarkt it was the longest
way round, but it was the only way she.
knew. She ventured into one or two
shops, and struggled to make herself un-
derstood, vainly; she stopped with the
crowd to gaze in at the windows of a
print-shop at some effort of the modern
masters, and wondered if it was wrong to.
think them quite as satisfactory as some
of the masterpieces Frau Schilling had
pointed out to her in the Royal Gallery;
the Altmarkt was thronged with people;
carriages fastened, who knows where;
every one seemed gay and cheerful she
wished with all her heart that she knew
a few of these pretty women, these kind
ly matrons; she longed to hear somebody
speak her name over her shoulder, to
happen suddenly upon some familiar face.
Once she passed two people talking Eng
lish, and she turned back and made be-
lieve an interest in the embroideries IN a
neighboring window that she might lis
ten to the delicious sounds.
81 was so surprised to see him, = the
lady was saying. He said be had come
to Dresden on important business / can't
think what it is.n
aPerhaps he will tell you,n laughed
her companion.
4sOh, no; nothing Of the kind he was
never sweet upon me; we are first coas-
.sAnd cousins are dangerous things.
When did he leave New York;
New York! Vio.et's heart bounded
here was somebody straight from home
Perhaps she knew him. Atany rate, he
must know John Dabney and she found
herself wondering what this strangers