Within the walls the greater part of Frankfort is built in the old
German style, the houses six or seven stories high and every story
projecting out over the other; so that those living in the upper part
can nearly shake hands out of the windows. At the corners figures of men
are often seen holding up the story above on their shoulders and making
horrible faces at the weight. When I state that in all these narrow
streets, which constitute the greater part of the city, there are no
sidewalks, the windows of the lower stories have iron gratings extending
a foot or so into the street, which is only wide enough for one cart to
pass along, you can have some idea of the facility of walking through
them, to say nothing of the piles of wood and market-women with baskets
of vegetables which one is continuously stumbling over. Even in the
wider streets I have always to look before and behind to keep out of the
way of the cabs; the people here get so accustomed to it that they leave
barely room for them to pass, and the carriages go dashing by at a
nearness which sometimes makes me shudder.
As I walked across the Main and looked down at the swift stream on its
way from the distant Thuringian Forest to join the Rhine, I thought of
the time when Schiller stood there in the days of his early struggles,
an exile from his native land, and, looking over the bridge, said in the
loneliness of his heart, "That water flows not so deep as my
sufferings.
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