The Legends of the Rhine from Basle to Rotterdam

Perhaps this volume is best memorialized by its mention In a A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain, where he writes: In one of the shops I had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death. It is entitled The Legends of the Rhine from Basle to Rotterdam, by F. J. Kiefer; translated by L. W. Garnham. All tourists mention the Rhine legends-in that sort of way which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar with them all his life, and that the reader cannot possibly be ignorant of them-but no tourist ever tells them. So this little book fed me in a very hungry place; and I, in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two little lunches from the same larder. I shall not mar Garnharn’s translation by meddling with its English; for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building English sentences on the German plan-and punctuating them accordingly to no plan at all. Due to the age and scarcity of the original we reproduced, some pages may be spotty, faded or difficult to read.