Excerpt from Legends of the Rhine Then the sound of a melodious female voice Speaking the English language fell On my ears. I looked round. A girl was bending over a book, and entertaining her father and mother by reading something of Special interest and beauty. I listened and recognised some of my own sentences rendered into the speech of Shakespeare. These three were learning to feel the glamour of the Lorelei legend as I had felt it. I confess my pulse beat quicker as I heard my poor endeavours highly praised, and I could not refrain from advancing and thanking the young reader for her kindly appreciation. She seemed delighted when she discovered that I was the author, and rose to greet me in the most amiable manner. I complimented the travellers on the fact, that during the last century the Rhine seemed to have become for the English people that home of romance which we Germans sought to find in Italy. The girl smiled, and remarked that I must pay that compliment to her mother in particular, as she was by birth an English woman. But the head of the family hastened to add that among Americans, whom he might speak for, the enthusiasm for the beauties of the Rhine was not less than among their anglo-saxon cousins. These two nations which are bound by so many ties to each other, and also to ourselves, were thus represented before me. The English-speaking people undoubtedly form by far the largest contingent of our Rhine travellers, and it was pleasant indeed to receive so fine a testimonial to the beauties of my homeland. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.