This little scene, which took place on an August afternoon in the
year 1869, had for its theater the highroad leading from Hausach to
Triberg, just at the place where a footpath descends into the valley
to the little town of Hornberg. The persons represented were young
men who had lately graduated at Heidelberg, and who were taking a
holiday together in the Black Forest, recovering from the recent
terrors of examination in the fragrant air of the pine woods. As far
off as Offenburg they had traveled by the railway in the prosaic
fashion of commercial travelers, from there they had tramped like
Canadian backwoodsmen, and reached Hasslach--twelve miles as the
crow flies. After resting for a day they set out at the first
cockcrow, and before the noontide heat reached the lovely
Kinzigthal, which lies all along the way from Hausach to Hornberg.
Over the door of a wayside inn a signboard, festooned with freshly-
cut carpenter's shavings, beckoned invitingly to them, and here the
young men halted. The view from this place was particularly
beautiful. The road made a kind of terrace halfway up the mountain,
on one side rising sheer up for a hundred feet to its summit,
thickly wooded all the way, on the other side sloping to the wide
valley, where the Gutach flowed, at times tumbling over rough
stones, or again spreading itself softly like oil, through flat
meadow land.
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