I am somehow reminded of a good story I heard the
other night from a man who was a witness of it and
an actor in it. At a certain German town last autumn
there was a tremendous _furore_ about Jenny Lind, who,
after driving the whole place mad, left it, on her
travels, early one morning. The moment her carriage
was outside the gates, a party of rampant students who
had escorted it rushed back to the inn, demanded to be
shown to her bedroom, swept like a whirlwind upstairs
into the room indicated to them, tore up the sheets,
and wore them in strips as decorations. An hour or two
afterwards a bald old gentleman of amiable appearance,
an Englishman, who was staying in the hotel, came to
breakfast at the _table d'hôte_, and was observed to be
much disturbed in his mind, and to show great terror
whenever a student came near him. At last he said, in
a low voice, to some people who were near him at the
table, 'You are English gentlemen, I observe. Most
extraordinary people, these Germans. Students,
as a body, raving mad, gentlemen!' 'Oh, no,' said
somebody else: 'excitable, but very good fellows,
and very sensible.' 'By God, sir!' returned the old
gentleman, still more disturbed, 'then there's something
political in it, and I'm a marked man. I went out for
a little walk this morning after shaving, and while I
was gone'--he fell into a terrible perspiration as he
told it--'they burst into my bedroom, tore up my sheets,
and are now patrolling the town in all directions with
bits of 'em in their button-holes.' I needn't wind
up by adding that they had gone to the wrong chamber.