The Villa on the Rhine (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: undisturbed. At all hours, whether those of trouble, when even life seems a burden and the world to have grown indifferent, or in moments of exalted feeling, when we seem removed from and beyond all reality?at all times comes the newspaper and forces itself on our attention, demanding why we too should not be fellow-workers in the life of the world. What now was America to the young man? And yet he eagerly read an account of the position of affairs in that country. The election of a new President of the Republic was arousing all the feelings of the new world, and the name of a man? Abraham Lincoln?universally held to be a model of uprightness and liberality, seemed to prevail, and with it a manifestation of the will of the people, that was to become historical. He read eagerly, and smiled when he thought how the French woman had told him that only an American girl could quiet the home-sick child, and how also the music of the festival had been of her composition. There was the child playing with a pious myth, while her native country was distracted by civil war. And again the young man's thoughts went back to the convent and the wondrous apparition. As he was about to lay the paper aside, an advertisement caught his eye. He knitted his forehead, looked hastily around and read it again; then telling the waiter that he wished to retain the paper, betook himself to his room. A handsome young man, said the guests. He is evidently a widower, who wishes to forget his sorrows by a trip on the Rhine; he wore crape on his hat. CHAPTER II. AGAINST THE STREAM. NAME?Erich Dournay. Doctor of Philosophy, Ex-Army Captain. Place of departure?(name of a small University-town); Destination? End of the journey. In this way the young man registered himself at the hotel, e...