Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/201

198 writing-room are beautiful cabinets of ivory inlaid, and wood in marquetrie—that is, flowers represented by inlaying different coloured woods.

In the working-room was a little wheel, which made me reflect with envy on the handiwork of our grandames, so much more vivacious than our stitching. You will probably, without a more prolonged description, my dear C., come to my conclusion that Rheinstein bears much the same resemblance to a castle of the middle ages that a cottage ornée does to a veritable rustic home. I imagined the rough old knights coming from their halls of savage power and rude luxury to laugh at all this jimcrackery.

The prince and princess make a holy day visit here every summer, and keep up this fanciful retrocession by wearing the costume of past ages. The warder maintained his unrelenting gravity to the last. "Man pleased him not, nor woman either," or I am sure my laughing companions would have won a smile.

We found going up the river quite a different affair from coming down. Our oarsmen raised a ragged sail. The wind was flawy, and we were scared; so they, at our cowardly entreaties, took it down, and then, rowing the boat to the shore, one of the men got out, and fastening one end of a rope to our mast and the other round his body, he began toilsomely towing us up the stream. Our hearts were too soft for this, so we disembarked too, and walked two miles to "The Angel" at Rudesheim; an angel indeed to us after this long day of—pleasure.